Use animated site icons with care
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2025 10:40 am
Animated favicons are a rarity today. Their main drawback is that they distract and irritate users. In addition, not many people manage to make a high-quality dynamic icon for a website. If the animation is light, the overall meaning of animation is lost, since users very often do not even notice it.
If, on the contrary, it is bright and travel agency email list intrusive, then it takes up too much of the viewer's attention. Many favicons do not lend themselves to quality animation at all.
Create dynamic favicons
A more interesting and advantageous option, compared to animated icons, is dynamic favicons. Today, few people use them, but in the future they have every chance of winning the trust of users and web developers.
A great example of a creative dynamic icon is Gmail – the favicon displays the number of unread messages in your email. The icon automatically updates when you receive a new message.
Create website icons in online game format
It is well known that web developers love experiments, so they often come up with something new and unusual. There have been many interesting stories about website icons. For example:
Iconic History is a browser extension that lets you turn your browsing history into a grid of their icons. It also has an additional setting that lets you highlight resources viewed at a specific time of day or night in the grid.
Defender of the Favicons is a favicon created in the format of an online game. The program is very simple and fast, since the size of the icon does not allow you to do something more intricate, but this is a great example of how creatively you can approach the creation of an icon for a website.
Download a useful document on the topic:
Checklist: How to Achieve Your Goals in Negotiations with Clients
Indexing of favicons by search engines
Search engines Google and Yandex easily and quickly index favicons of websites and Internet resources. Most often, this process takes from several days to a week. Recognition of site icons occurs automatically, even if the favicon is changed to a new one.
Both search engines have their own technical requirements for site favicons. They are not complicated, but they must be followed.
Google Favicon Requirements
This search engine is gradually starting to abandon the standard icon size of 16x16 pixels. Google indexes such icons, but they are not always displayed correctly and qualitatively. Google's main requirement for favicon size is a multiple of 48 (for example, 96x96 pixels). Most webmasters agree that when choosing the size of a website icon, it is worth focusing on Google's requirements.
The rest of the technical requirements of this search engine are simple:
The favicon must not contain images of obscene or offensive content.
The icon should match the style of the site, brand and the company as a whole.
Favicon must be unique. Copying other people's icons is prohibited.
Google indexing takes a little longer than Yandex. In addition, this search engine is especially slow to respond to frequent changes of icons on the site.
If, on the contrary, it is bright and travel agency email list intrusive, then it takes up too much of the viewer's attention. Many favicons do not lend themselves to quality animation at all.
Create dynamic favicons
A more interesting and advantageous option, compared to animated icons, is dynamic favicons. Today, few people use them, but in the future they have every chance of winning the trust of users and web developers.
A great example of a creative dynamic icon is Gmail – the favicon displays the number of unread messages in your email. The icon automatically updates when you receive a new message.
Create website icons in online game format
It is well known that web developers love experiments, so they often come up with something new and unusual. There have been many interesting stories about website icons. For example:
Iconic History is a browser extension that lets you turn your browsing history into a grid of their icons. It also has an additional setting that lets you highlight resources viewed at a specific time of day or night in the grid.
Defender of the Favicons is a favicon created in the format of an online game. The program is very simple and fast, since the size of the icon does not allow you to do something more intricate, but this is a great example of how creatively you can approach the creation of an icon for a website.
Download a useful document on the topic:
Checklist: How to Achieve Your Goals in Negotiations with Clients
Indexing of favicons by search engines
Search engines Google and Yandex easily and quickly index favicons of websites and Internet resources. Most often, this process takes from several days to a week. Recognition of site icons occurs automatically, even if the favicon is changed to a new one.
Both search engines have their own technical requirements for site favicons. They are not complicated, but they must be followed.
Google Favicon Requirements
This search engine is gradually starting to abandon the standard icon size of 16x16 pixels. Google indexes such icons, but they are not always displayed correctly and qualitatively. Google's main requirement for favicon size is a multiple of 48 (for example, 96x96 pixels). Most webmasters agree that when choosing the size of a website icon, it is worth focusing on Google's requirements.
The rest of the technical requirements of this search engine are simple:
The favicon must not contain images of obscene or offensive content.
The icon should match the style of the site, brand and the company as a whole.
Favicon must be unique. Copying other people's icons is prohibited.
Google indexing takes a little longer than Yandex. In addition, this search engine is especially slow to respond to frequent changes of icons on the site.