moderate change What the guidance says has shifted
Google's favicon guidelines now state that Googlebot must crawl the home page and follow any redirects to the page where the favicon is specified, and that the home page and favicon file must not be blocked from crawling by robots.txt or other means.
Lincoln Digital's AI Overview
Site owners may want to verify that redirects from the home page to the page specifying the favicon are crawlable and that neither the home page nor favicon file is blocked by robots.txt, authentication, or other access controls. This broadens the earlier wording from 'cannot be blocked for crawling' to explicitly include 'other means', which could tighten enforcement.
Generated by AI from the change below: a guide to what it could mean, not a certainty.
Word for word
red was taken outgreen was put in
In “Guidelines”
[removed: Googlebot-Image must be able to crawl the favicon file and Googlebot must be able to crawl the home page; they cannot be blocked for crawling.]
[added: Googlebot must be able to crawl the home page, follow any redirects from there to the page where the favicon is specified, and Googlebot-Image must be able to crawl the favicon file. These URLs must not be blocked from crawling by a robots.txt file or by other means.]
On Google's page
The "before" is the same page with the earlier wording put back.
Changed between our checks at and (UK time)Google's “last updated” date moved from 28 Aug 2026 to 27 Oct 2026Posted on X Link to this change