Overview
Google Favicon is a search engine crawler associated with Google, used for historically fetching website favicons for Google products.
Its primary user-agent pattern is Google favicon; a representative HTTP user-agent is Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.75 Safari/537.36 Google Favicon.
Google Favicon is verified with High confidence. The identity type is Official Documented. This legacy or noncanonical identity is retained for historical log matching.
Google Favicon is documented as honoring robots.txt directives.
This retired identity is retained for historical log matching; current favicon controls use Googlebot-Image.
Treat the user-agent or identity as a claim and corroborate it with published network data, reverse DNS, signed-request evidence, or current operator documentation when available.
Identity
- User-Agent
Google favicon- HTTP Agent Examples
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.75 Safari/537.36 Google Favicon- Robots.txt Token
Googlebot-Image- Identity Type
- Official Documented
- Evidence Method
- Verify Google Favicon by matching `Google favicon` to Google evidence, then corroborating the request with source-network ownership, reverse DNS, signed request data, or current operator documentation.
Classification
- Type
- Search Engine Crawler
- Kind
- Search Engine Crawler
- Family
- Purpose
- search-indexing
Behavior and handling
- Common Use
- historically fetching website favicons for Google products
- Detection Notes
- Google Favicon traffic is primarily detected by `Google favicon`; a representative HTTP user-agent is `Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.75 Safari/537.36 Google Favicon`. Treat these values as identification claims and corroborate them with source-network ownership, reverse DNS, signed request data, or current operator documentation.
- Respects robots.txt
- Yes
- Spoofing Risk
- Google Favicon can be spoofed if identification relies only on a user-agent string; corroborate the request with stronger operator-controlled evidence when available.
- Risk
- Neutral
- Recommended Handling
- Monitor
Rules and controls
- Robots.txt Snippet
# Legacy or noncanonical identity. Confirm the current canonical token before relying on robots.txt.