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OK seriously WTF is going on with the favicons?
Posted by on January 19, 2026 at 2:19 amI've waited since November.
Google AI Overviews has updated the favicons of websites several times since November but the SERP remains stuck. All the favicons are outdated, even for several of my competitors.
I updated my favicon back in November. Waited until December, nothing. AI Overviews updated within a few days. Then I changed it again and it's almost February now, still no change in the SERP. AI Overviews shows the new favicon.
It is the same situation for 3 of my competitors. AI Overviews shows the new favicon but the SERP is stuck since autumn of last year.
Is anyone else having the same issue? Is this a known issue?
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1 Reply
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Yep, going on a couple months now waiting for mine to update.
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Have you tried it in an incognito window?
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OMG yes, it’s all over the place!!
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Change the favicon file name if you have the capability. Eg from favicon.ico to favicon-v2.ico or something like that. It will still take an annoying amount of time after doing this but will speed things up from months to weeks. Favicons are cached aggressively for long periods of time by Google and browsers. Not sure why.
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Yeah you are not alone, I have seen this across a few properties too. It feels like Google is running separate caching pipelines for AI Overviews vs the main SERP and they are wildly out of sync. The SERP favicon cache seems absurdly sticky right now, even when everything is correct technically. Clearing cache signals like sitemap updates or recrawls rarely move it. In most cases it eventually flips with no clear trigger, which is frustrating but consistent. At this point I treat favicon changes as very low priority unless it is broken entirely.
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Yeah, Some search central guy was telling it was the problem of DA. I haven’t found the actual solution to this problem yet.
But there’s 1 method I want to try but its not possible for me :
If you have got GMB then try changing new icon there, I think this was working for some guys, as it re-index all the files in the website sometimes.
*** Link website to your GMB first. -
I would not stressed much about favicons things.
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Yes! Several sites have incorrect or default favicons
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