Last night, I noticed favicons displayed next to Google partners in paid search results here in the United Kingdom. Search Engine Land reported that favicons were being spotted in German and Polish search results (with a commenter noticing that paid search results in the US were also triggering some favicons). Susan Hallam also went digging, and noticed that the favicons were being hosted on Google as PNGs (not the regular favicon.ico like you see at the top of your address bar).
I had initially only been able to get results for Ask.com and eBay, but it seems that in Germany, Avis are showing with a favicon of a red car (not their logo or favicon from their site) on a search for "autovermietung" (car hire).
This significantly changes the ballgame.
In a page of paid search results for a travel related query, your eye is immediately drawn to colorful, recognizable logos. Since it appears to be only a test, with no option to opt-in in the AdWords interface, this gives a large advantage to companies which have their favicons indexed and stored on Gstatic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that companies using the Google Checkout logo enjoy higher click through rate; naturally, we would expect to see a similar trend for favicon displays in paid search results.
The flip side to this is what if it's made available to all advertisers? What if any company could point Google in the direction of their favicon file and choose to display their logo in the paid search results? I still think there would be a significant proportion of searchers naturally clicking on the logo they've most engaged with in the past (think of a Nike swoosh versus... what's the Reebok logo?). There would also be a large chunk of people who felt the paid search space was too cluttered with all the logos (an AdWords-esque Times Square, perhaps) and instead would favor the "clean" natural results.
We are visual searchers. Our eyes and purchase preferences are drawn to the familiar and easy to understand format of brand logos and characters even from an early age, according to George Comstock and Erica Scharrer in Media and the American Child. This means that if the favicon tests are rolled out on a more widespread basis, we'll see a vast shift in the way searchers interact with search results. The way that it will effect click through rate - and by proxy Quality Score - suggests that advertisers will be pushed into thinking up new ways for users to engage with their brands. I don't think favicons are necessarily a bad thing, but it will be a challenge to the paid search techniques we've known and perfected over many years.
