Why Is My Old WordPress Logo Still Showing in Google Search?

If you have a WordPress favicon not updating in Google, you aren’t alone. You uploaded a shiny new icon last week, but the search results still show the old one. You cleared your browser cache. You can see the new icon on every tab when you visit your site. But Google still shows the old one (or worse, a transparent square) next to your search result.

Don’t panic. Nothing is broken on your end.

This is one of the most common questions I see from bloggers, and the answer is almost always the same: WordPress favicon not updating in Google is a caching issue on Google’s side, not yours. Google holds onto favicons for 2-6 weeks before refreshing them in search results. Sometimes longer. Your replacement is sitting on your server right now, doing its job – the search index just hasn’t caught up.

Here’s the checklist I walk through to confirm the new favicon is live, plus the one Search Console trick that nudges Google to refresh faster.

Why is my WordPress favicon not updating in Google?

The short version: Google caches favicons aggressively, and there’s no setting to force an instant update.

When Googlebot crawls your homepage, it grabs your favicon and stores a copy in its image index. That cached copy is what shows up next to your site in search results. Google doesn’t re-fetch the favicon every time someone searches – that would be wasteful for a tiny image. Instead, it checks back on its own schedule, which is usually 2-6 weeks but can stretch longer for low-traffic sites.

So even though you’ve replaced the file, Google is still serving its cached version. There’s nothing wrong with WordPress, your theme, or your favicon file. The new icon will appear once Google decides to refresh.

I’ve seen this confuse bloggers for weeks. They re-upload the favicon 3 or 4 times, swap themes, and even contact their host – all because Google won’t update. The fix isn’t on your site. It’s on Google’s end, and you can speed it up with one Search Console request.

But before you do anything, you need to confirm the new favicon is actually live and reachable. That’s the next step.

How do I confirm my new favicon is actually live?

Don’t skip this part. If your favicon isn’t reachable at the right URL, no amount of waiting will help Google find it.

Open a new browser tab and type this exact URL: yoursite.com/favicon.ico (replace yoursite.com with your real domain). Press Enter. You should see your new favicon icon load on a blank page. If you see the old one, that’s just your browser cache – we’ll fix that in a second.

To bypass the browser cache, add a fake parameter to the end: yoursite.com/favicon.ico?v=2. The ?v=2 tells the browser “this is a different file, fetch a fresh copy.” If the new favicon loads with the cache buster but the old one loads without it, your browser is the problem, not your site.

If neither URL shows your new favicon – or you get a 404 error – then the favicon really isn’t set correctly in WordPress. That’s a different problem, and you’ll fix it in the next section.

One more test worth running. Open your site in an incognito window (Ctrl+Shift+N in Chrome) and look at the browser tab. The favicon there is the same one Google will eventually grab.

If it’s the new one, you’re good. If it’s the old one, your WordPress setting didn’t save.

Where do I update the favicon in WordPress?

WordPress calls the favicon a “Site Icon,” and the path to update it depends on whether you’re using a classic theme or a block theme.

For classic themes (Astra, GeneratePress, Kadence, OceanWP, and most older themes), go to Appearance > Customize > Site Identity. You’ll see a section called “Site Icon” with an Upload button. Click it, pick your new favicon, and click Publish at the top of the Customizer panel.

If you can’t find Customize in your menu, your theme might have hidden it – my guide on where the WordPress Customizer went covers how to bring it back. And if entire chunks of your dashboard sidebar have vanished, my fix for the WordPress left menu missing covers why Customizer items disappear with it.

For block themes (Twenty Twenty-Four, Twenty Twenty-Five, Ollie, and most themes from 2024 onwards), the Customizer is gone. Go to Appearance > Editor > Styles and look for a settings panel. The Site Icon option is sometimes tucked away here, but more often you need to go to Settings > General instead, or use the Tools menu in the Site Editor sidebar.

The easiest path on a block theme: go to Settings > General and scroll to the bottom. Some block themes (and WordPress 6.5+) added the Site Icon control there directly. If you don’t see it, install the free Site Icon plugin from the WordPress repository – it adds a dedicated upload screen that works on every theme.

Whichever path you used, save your changes and test the favicon URL again with the cache buster. If you upload a new file but Save Changes doesn’t seem to take effect, that can be its own headache – my Kadence Customizer not saving changes fix covers the most common causes.

How do I tell Google to refresh my favicon?

This is the part that actually speeds things up. Google Search Console has a feature called URL Inspection that lets you ask Google to recrawl a specific page.

Log into Google Search Console. If you don’t have it set up yet, that’s a separate (and important) task – it takes about 10 minutes and you’ll need it for tracking everything else, including how your meta descriptions perform in search.

Once you’re in Search Console, click URL Inspection in the left sidebar. Paste your homepage URL into the search bar at the top (just https://yoursite.com/, no trailing path). Hit Enter and wait for the results to load.

You’ll see a status message about whether the URL is indexed. Look for the Request Indexing button (sometimes labeled “Test Live URL” first). Click it.

Google will recrawl your homepage within 10 minutes to 24 hours. Because the favicon link is in your homepage’s HTML head, Google picks up the new favicon URL during that recrawl.

Important: Request Indexing on the homepage, not on individual posts. The favicon is referenced from your site’s root, so refreshing the homepage is what matters. (If you can’t even open your homepage to make a small edit, my fix for WordPress editor that won’t let you edit pages sorts that out first.)

While you’re in Search Console, resubmit your sitemap too. Click Sitemaps in the sidebar, find your sitemap entry (something like sitemap.xml or sitemap_index.xml if you use Yoast or Rank Math), and click the 3-dot menu next to it. Pick Resubmit. This nudges Google to recrawl your whole site, which can help if more than one page needs refreshing.

If you haven’t picked an SEO plugin yet, my Rank Math vs Yoast SEO comparison covers which one is easier for sitemaps and beginner-friendly settings.

How long until the new favicon shows in search?

Realistic timeline: 2-6 weeks for most sites, even after Request Indexing.

I know that sounds frustrating when you’ve done everything right. But Google’s favicon refresh schedule is separate from its page index. Even if Google recrawls your homepage tomorrow, the favicon image cache is updated on its own track. Most bloggers I’ve worked with see the new favicon appear in search results around the 3-week mark.

For high-traffic sites that get crawled often, it can be as fast as 5-7 days. For brand-new sites or low-traffic blogs, it can stretch to 8 weeks. There’s no public way to check exactly when Google will swap the cached image.

What to do if 8+ weeks pass and the old favicon is still showing:

1. Reconfirm the favicon is live at yoursite.com/favicon.ico (cache busted)
2. Check that the favicon HTML tag is in your page source (View Source, search for icon)
3. Request Indexing one more time in Search Console
4. Check the Coverage report in Search Console for any homepage crawl errors
5. Make sure your robots.txt isn’t blocking /favicon.ico (rare, but it happens)

If everything checks out and Google still won’t update, post in the Google Search Central forum. Google staff sometimes respond and can manually flag the issue. I’ve seen it happen for sites stuck past the 10-week mark.

What if my favicon broke entirely?

A different but related problem: your favicon shows as a blank white square or a generic globe icon in search results. That’s not a caching issue. Your favicon file itself has a problem.

The 3 most common causes:

Wrong file format. WordPress accepts PNG, JPG, GIF, and ICO for favicons, but Google has a strong preference for PNG or ICO. If you uploaded a JPG, the transparent areas around your logo might render as white in search. Convert your logo to PNG with a transparent background (Canva, Figma, and Photoshop all export PNG with transparency).

Wrong dimensions. Google recommends a minimum of 48×48 pixels, and the favicon size must be a multiplier of 48 (so 96×96, 144×144, 192×192, or 512×512). WordPress itself recommends 512×512.

If you uploaded a tiny 16×16 favicon (the old standard), Google might reject it. Re-export at 512×512.

Transparency rendered as white. This was the exact issue I keep seeing on the WordPress forums. The PNG had transparency, but the search result showed a transparent area filled with white.

The fix is to design the favicon with a solid background color baked in. Don’t rely on transparency for the search result thumbnail. A square logo with a colored background renders consistently across light and dark modes.

If you need a quick way to make a clean square logo, Canva AI for featured images covers the same workflow I use for favicons.

One more thing worth checking. If your favicon looks pixelated or fuzzy in search results, that’s a resolution problem. WordPress automatically generates smaller versions from your 512×512 upload, but if you originally uploaded something tiny and let WordPress upscale it, the result is blurry.

Re-upload a sharp 512×512 source file. The same logic applies to other blurry images on your site – resolution at upload time matters more than display size.

FAQ

How long does it take for Google to update a favicon?

In my experience, Google holds onto its cached favicons for 2-6 weeks. It doesn’t fetch the icon every time someone searches. You just have to wait for Google to recrawl your homepage on its own schedule.

How do I force Google to update my favicon?

There isn’t a magic button to update it instantly. But I always use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console to request indexing for my homepage. That tells Google to crawl the site again, which speeds up the process.

Why is my WordPress favicon showing in the browser but not in Google?

This happens because your browser and Google maintain separate caches. Your browser grabbed the fresh file when you visited the site, but Google’s search index is still serving the old image from its servers.

What are Google’s favicon requirements?

Google wants a square image that’s a multiple of 48 pixels, like 96×96 or 144×144. WordPress usually recommends uploading a 512×512 file, which works perfectly. Just make sure you save it as a PNG or ICO file.

Your new favicon is on its way

Here’s what I want you to take away from this. When your WordPress favicon isn’t updating in Google, it’s almost always a patience problem, not a technical one. The new icon is live on your site. Google just hasn’t picked it up yet.

Confirm the favicon loads at yoursite.com/favicon.ico?v=2. Confirm it’s set in Customize > Site Identity (or the block theme equivalent). Then go to Search Console and Request Indexing on your homepage. After that, the only thing left to do is wait 2-6 weeks.

While you’re tweaking your branding, this is also a good moment to double-check your WordPress site title and make sure both pieces match in search results. And if you ever update something on the site and panic that nothing is showing, my guide on WordPress changes not appearing on the live site covers cache layers that hide perfectly good edits.

Your favicon will show up. Just not today.