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Rule · engine · active v3

Favicon presence check

Search surfaces show your icon next to the result. No icon link, no icon — and the failure is always yours to fix, never Google’s.

What it checks

Every audited page is scanned for a <link> whose rel contains icon. The checker then fetches the href and requires a 200 with an image MIME type. One good link passes the whole page.

Pass conditions

• At least one rel="icon" (or shortcut icon) link in <head>.
• The href resolves — root-relative or absolute, no 404 after deploys that move assets.
• Response serves an image content type, not an HTML error page wearing a 200.

Typical fails

SPA shells that never got a link tag; asset-pipeline rewrites that change the hashed filename without updating HTML; href pointing at a route that now requires auth. Our demo run flipped this rule from fail to pass the week the icon link was restored — the finding diff tells that story.

Fix checklist

• Add <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico"> plus an SVG or PNG variant for modern surfaces.
• Keep apple-touch-icon alongside for iOS — it is a separate surface, not a substitute.
• Re-run one audit; the verdict should flip without touching any other rule.