Improve Every Page On Your Site In 5 Minutes

Favicons (favorites icon) are the mini-icons that reside next to the web address in your browser:

They usually look like a very tiny version of the website's logo. Making it look like the logo allows readers to find it easily when it's in a crowd. A common example of a crowd is when you are using Firefox, a browser that supports tabs. Here are some examples of well-known websites that have created customized favicons:

See how easy it is to find the website you are looking for just by looking at the icons?

Here are some blogs that have created custom favicons:

These blogs include SeaNova, innocent beverages, El Bloggo Torcido, Marcia E. Brubeck, and Phil Steinmeyer. (All blog examples are blogs we've reviewed.)

If you haven't created a custom favicon, or you can't, you will be stuck with a default favicon which might make it more difficult to find your site in the crowd. Here are blogs that use the Blogger platform:

[Update...see below]

Stuck with the Blogger company favicon are: A Painting a Day, jintrinsique, One Black Bird, Show Me the Money, and Sharma Designs.

And here are favicons from blogs that use the Typepad platform:

These include ShoeLover, Austin Dog Trainer, Hamakua Farms, and Lightning Labels.

In Typepad, if you don't upload a custom favicon, you get the default Typepad company favicon instead.

One reason I like Typepad and WordPress over Blogger is that you can upload a custom favicon. You can only do this with a Blogger site if it is not hosted by Blogger.

So to sum up, favicons make your site easy to find at a glance, and add a nice touch of professionalism to boot.

If you would like to add a favicon to your site, see our post called Blog Dos #6: Create a favicon.

[Update: Sharla from Sharma Designs just commented that her blog made a move from Blogger to Typepad recently and she has in fact added a favicon. It looks pretty cool too.]

[Update #2: Headline changed as an experiment on 9/29 as a result of CopyBlogger's Brian Clark. Original headline was "A good reason to have Favicons...Firefox tabs."]

Technorati : blogger favicon, favicon, favicons, favorites icon, typepad favicon, wordpress favicon

Comments

[sharla]

I have a favicon on my new blog http://www.sharmadesigns.typepad.com. I could never figure out how to do it in blogger.

Thanks to your favicon post I learned how to do it in typepad!

[Brian Brown]

Thanks Sharla. Sorry I missed it. I've updated the post.

[Kirsten Harrell, Psy.D.]

Thanks so much for this post! I have wondered how to get this - I didn't even know what it was called until now! Now I have a cute little favicon on my blog!

[Brian Brown]

No problem Kirsten. It does look great and ties into your logo perfectly.

[Derek Andrews]

If you take a look at The ChipShop you will see that it is possible to add a favicon to a Blogspot (Blogger) blog.