Get The FavIcon For Any Website | Interesting Stuff

If you are a web developer, you are surely familiar with the FavIcon. It is the small icon representing the minified version of the site logo (or theme) in the browser addressbar.

There are various ways to get these FavIcon for any domain by making some free API calls.

Google FavIcon Converter API
Eg.
http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=thinkerviews.com

http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=google.com

http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=techcrunch.com

http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=yahoo.com

http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=amazon.com

All the above calls to Google S2 FavIcon Converter API returns 16px X 16px PNG image. Either you can save them for the reference or you can use them directly in you webpage like

Amazon.com is the pioneer in the field of E-Commerce.


The source code for the above line is

<img src=”http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=amazon.com” title = “amazon.com” /> Amazon.com is the pioneer in the field of E-Commerce.

Some of the interesting use of the service are..
You can use the service to develop a cool wordpress plugin for example. Or may be a social bookmarking add-on of your own. Using RSS feeds from some websites? You may try showing the source’s favicon alongwith the news title! Preparing a mash-up using various APIs? You may like to add the favicon for the links displayed.
You can find some more interesting uses based on your imagination.

g.etfv.co
This service is no loger available as of January 26, 2015; hence removed the links and details.

grabicon.com

http://grabicon.com/icon?domain=thinkerviews.com

You can specify favicon size also:
http://grabicon.com/icon?domain=thinkerviews.com&size=32

And it can be embedded into img tag also. There is no SSL support (i.e. https://…) available for this service.

Thanks for heads up @Jaime from grabicon.com 🙂 .