Do you want to see all the places where a favicon can be displayed? Then, just follow along, and I’ll show you.

Let me give you two URLs. They happen to be two of my favorite websites, but most likely you’ve never heard of either of them. If you do happen to have visited one of them before, just pick the other one for this demonstration. That’s so you can watch the favicon come up out of nowhere when your browser finds it and puts it where it’s supposed to go. I’ll give you the URLS, but you need to wait! Don’t do anything until I tell you!

URL1: www.stormcarib.com

URL2: www.triddlers.com

1st Place: the Address Bar

All right. Let’s go. The first thing I want you to do is open a new tab ( or new window if you have to ). Now type in your URL in the Address Bar. Look quick – there’s the favicon! It’s just to the left of what you just typed in.

2nd Place: the Tab Bar

Are you using a tabbed browser, like Firefox or a later version of Internet Explorer? Then you should also see the favicon to the left of the website title in the tab bar.

3rd Place: Bookmarks or Favorites

I asked you to pick a URL you haven’t visited, so you obviously won’t find it in your favorites yet. Put it there by clicking ‘Favorites’, then ‘Add to Favorites’. Next, click the ‘Add’ button. When you return to ‘Favorites’, your new addition will be at the bottom of the list. Its favicon should be next to it.

If you have recently made a favicon of your own, and it doesn’t appear in any of the three places where it should be, don’t despair! This happens all the time. Here’s what to do:

1) Clear your cache.

2) If you still can’t find your favicon, close and reopen your browser.

3) If that fails also, then there can be only two reasons: a) The browser that you’re using doesn’t use favicons at all, which is not very likely, or b) Your favicon is FAKE!

Just because is says ‘favicon.ico’, that doesn’t make it a REAL favicon. Make sure that you create a favicon properly, so that it can work properly. See below for more information.

Let me show you where to go to create a favicon for use on your own website. Visit my blog at ScriptsForYourWebsite.com for lots of great easy-to-use plugins and scripts for your own blog.