Google Is Showing a Grey Globe Instead of Your Favicon

Everyone assumes the small icon beside a Google search result belongs to Google. It does not. It belongs to you, it is read from your own home page, and when Google cannot read it you get a plain grey globe instead.

During our morning operations review we end up looking at a lot of Irish business sites in a search results page, side by side with their competitors. The pattern is consistent. Two or three results carry a crisp logo and a proper business name. One sits under a generic globe and a bare domain, and it is almost never the worst business on the list. It is just the one nobody set up properly.

This is fixable in about two minutes of work and a few weeks of patience. What follows is what Google actually documents, which myths keep the globe in place, and how to verify the fix rather than assume it.

The icon is the first thing the eye lands on

Statcounter puts mobile at just under 58% of browsing in Ireland as of July 2026, with desktop around 40%, and those figures move a point or two either way month to month depending on how the sample falls ^[1]. Round it down and call it more than half your search traffic arriving on a phone screen roughly the width of a beer mat.

On that screen, the icon and the site name sit on the top line of every result, above the headline. They are the first thing rendered and the first thing a thumb recognises.

Consider a typical case. An audiology clinic in Killorglin has a patient who was given the name by their GP, types that name into a phone, and gets a list of results. One is the clinic. Two are national chains with their logos beside them. The clinic's result is correct, ranks fine, and is topped by a grey globe and a lowercase domain that could belong to anybody. Nothing has gone wrong technically. The patient just taps the result that looks like an actual business, because on a phone that top line is doing the work a shopfront does on the street.

That is not a ranking problem. It is a recognition problem, and no amount of content work fixes it.

Myth one: Google picks the icon and you cannot influence it

Google's documentation is specific about where the favicon comes from. It is retrieved from the home page header, from a link element, and Google supports the icon, shortcut icon, apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-icon-precomposed values on the rel attribute ^[2].

The image rules are short. It must be square, a 1:1 aspect ratio, and at least 8x8 pixels, though Google explicitly recommends going larger than 48x48. Any valid favicon format is supported. The URL must be stable, which in Google's phrasing means do not change it frequently.

One detail catches people out. Google supports one favicon per site, where a site means the hostname. You cannot give your shop section one icon and your blog another. Whatever sits on the home page is what every result from that hostname carries, including the pages you care most about.

Myth two: uploading a logo to the site is enough

This is the one that keeps the globe in place longest, because the site looks correct in your own browser. The tab shows your logo. Everything appears done.

Google needs two separate things to be crawlable: Googlebot must be able to crawl the home page, and Googlebot-Image must be able to crawl the favicon file itself. Neither can be blocked ^[2]. A robots.txt rule that disallows an uploads directory, or a security plugin that blocks image requests without a referrer, is enough to leave you with a globe indefinitely while the icon renders perfectly for every human visitor.

I have made this exact mistake. We completed a migration, set the site icon, saw it in the browser tab and signed the job off, and a robots.txt carried over from the old host was quietly disallowing the uploads path. The icon was still a globe in search weeks later. We now verify the favicon file loads as an anonymous request before anyone calls a migration finished.

On WordPress the mechanism is built in and you do not need to touch a template. Since version 6.5 the Site Icon lives in Settings, then General. On versions 4.3 to 6.4 it sits under Appearance, then Customize, then Site Identity. Either way the image must be square and at least 512 pixels on each side, with PNG recommended, and WordPress generates the smaller variants and writes the link elements for you ^[3].

Two minutes, if you hold the admin login. If your site was built by somebody who kept the keys, it is a change request, a wait, and an hourly rate for what is genuinely a file upload. That gap is the practical argument for hosting where you hold the WordPress admin login from day one rather than renting access to your own business.

Myth three: the name beside the icon is just your domain

It is not, and this half of the problem gets far less attention than the icon.

Google calls it the site name, and you can state a preference for it using WebSite structured data on your home page. Two properties do the work: name, the name of the website, and url, set to the canonical home page of your domain or subdomain. There is an optional alternateName property for suggesting a fallback if your first choice is not selected. The markup has to be on the home page root, not a subdirectory, and Google supports one site name per site ^[4].

Google also reads og:site_name, the title element, headings and other home page text when it generates a name automatically, but the documentation is clear that the structured data carries the most weight if you want to express a preference ^[4]. Keep the name concise and recognisable. Google's own guidance warns against generic keyword strings of the "Best Dentists In Iowa" variety, and long names get truncated on smaller screens anyway.

For the clinic in the example, this is the difference between a result headed "Killorglin Audiology" and one headed with a lowercase domain string. It is one more entry in the structured data that tells Google what your business actually is, and it sits in the same block as the rest of it.

What Google will not do for you

Three honest limits, because none of this is a switch you flip.

Google does not guarantee your favicon will appear even when every guideline is met ^[2]. That is stated plainly in the documentation and it is worth believing.

Nothing here is instant. Google describes crawling as taking anywhere from several days to several weeks, depending on how often its systems decide your content needs refreshing ^[2]. If you set a site icon this morning and search your business name this afternoon, you will see a globe, and that tells you nothing. The same recrawl lag applies to most of the wider performance work that decides how your site behaves once people do click, which is why both are measured in weeks rather than refreshes.

And you cannot ring anybody about the site name. Google states it cannot manually change an automatically selected site name. You can supply alternatives for its systems to consider, and that is the whole of your influence.

Fix your search result identity in four steps

Prepare. Make a square PNG, 512 pixels or larger, using the mark from your logo rather than the full wordmark, and look at it at thumbnail size before you commit to it. Detail that reads beautifully on a van disappears entirely at 16 pixels.

Deploy. In WordPress, go to Settings, then General, then Site Icon, and upload it. On older versions use Appearance, then Customize, then Site Identity.

Verify. Open your home page source and confirm a link element with rel="icon" is present. Then open the favicon file URL directly in a private window, and check your robots.txt does not disallow the path it sits in. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the step that catches the failure.

Confirm. Search your own business name on a phone, in a private window, a few weeks later. Not on your laptop, where your browser has cached the icon since 2019 and will show it to you regardless.

Where a hosted builder does this just as well

Fair is fair. If your entire operation is a one-page site with a phone number and an opening hours block, the site icon upload on Squarespace or Wix is every bit as quick as it is on WordPress, and moving platforms to fix a favicon would be daft. The icon half of this is genuinely solved everywhere.

The site name half is where it separates. Getting WebSite structured data with a considered alternateName onto the home page root, alongside LocalBusiness markup and whatever else your sector needs, assumes you can edit what your platform emits in the head of your home page. On a platform you fully control that is an afternoon. On a closed builder it is whatever the vendor decided to expose, and you find out which when you go looking.

Go and look at your own top line

The icon and the name above your search result are yours to set, they are documented, and the whole job is one square image and a small block of structured data. Most of the sites showing a grey globe are not showing it because somebody decided against a logo. They are showing it because nobody ever verified the file was reachable.

Search your own business name on your phone this week and read the top line rather than the headline. Whatever sits up there is the first thing seen by every customer who was handed your name by somebody else.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is my favicon showing in my browser tab but not in Google search results?

Almost always a crawl problem rather than a file problem. Your browser loads the icon directly, while Google needs Googlebot-Image to be able to crawl the favicon file and Googlebot to be able to crawl your home page, and neither can be blocked. Check that your robots.txt does not disallow the directory the image sits in, and that no security plugin is blocking image requests. Then check the home page source contains a link element with rel="icon".

How long does it take for a new favicon to appear in Google?

Google describes crawling as taking anywhere from several days to several weeks, depending on how often its systems determine content needs refreshing. There is no way to request it faster and no report in Search Console that tracks it. Set it, verify the file is reachable, and check again in a few weeks on a device that has never visited your site.

What size should a favicon be for a WordPress business site?

Upload a square image at least 512 pixels on each side, with PNG recommended, and WordPress generates the smaller variants from it. Google's own minimum is far lower, a square image of at least 8x8 pixels, but it explicitly recommends going larger than 48x48. Uploading at 512 covers browser tabs, mobile home screen icons and search results from one file.

Can I set a different favicon for different pages on my site?

No. Google supports one favicon per site, where a site is defined by the hostname. Whatever is set on your home page applies to every result from that hostname, so there is no way to give your shop pages one icon and your blog another.

How do I change the site name that appears above my page title?

Add WebSite structured data to your home page root with a name property and a url property pointing at your canonical home page, and optionally an alternateName as a fallback. Google also reads og:site_name, your title element and home page headings, but the structured data carries the most weight. Google cannot manually change an automatically selected site name, so alternatives are your only lever.

Does any of this affect where I rank on Google?

Not directly. The favicon and site name change how your result looks, not where it sits. The effect shows up in whether somebody taps your result rather than the one above or below it, which matters most for searches on your own business name, where you are already ranking and the competition is other results that look more established.

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