The Hall of Clowns: why sites without favicons get a 🤡
No favicon, no icon, a clown. Here is why Square Town does it, how the check works, and how to leave.
The Hall of Clowns is Square Town's public list of squares whose site has no favicon. When you buy a square on Square Town (square.pov.town) it fetches your icon through Google's favicon service; if Google answers 404, your square shows a 🤡 instead of an icon and your domain joins the Hall of Clowns in the side panel. Add a favicon, click your square, press "I fixed my favicon", and you're out — with a 🎈 announcement in the live feed.
TL;DR — Square Town never asks you to upload anything; your favicon is your square. No favicon means nothing to show, so you get a clown until you fix it. The check is one HTTP request to
google.com/s2/favicons?domain=yourdomain&sz=64: 200 = icon, 404 = clown, anything else = left alone. Fix: put afavicon.icoat your site root or add a<link rel="icon">, wait for Google to notice, then hit recheck. Escaping is public too.
Why a missing favicon gets you a clown
Square Town sells one thing: a 1×1 square that displays your site's favicon and links to your URL. There is no logo upload, no image editor, no size choice — you paste a URL and Square Town fetches the icon. That's the whole product, and it's why a square costs $1 instead of the design-and-upload prices you see elsewhere (see why every square costs exactly $1).
So a site with no favicon has bought a square and given Square Town nothing to put in it. Leaving it blank would make the wall look broken. Putting a generic placeholder in would be polite and forgettable. Square Town puts a clown there and lists you publicly, because a little embarrassment is the most effective favicon-adoption programme ever devised. The rulebook says it plainly: "If your site has no favicon, you get a clown emoji until you add one, plus a spot in the public Hall of Clowns."
It's not permanent and it's not a fine. Your square is still yours, still clickable, still counts views and clicks. It just looks like a clown until you do the ten-minute job the rest of the web did in 2004.
How the check actually works
The detector is deliberately tiny. After every purchase completes, Square Town runs one request in the background:
GET https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=<yourdomain>&sz=64
Google's favicon service redirects to its gstatic faviconV2 endpoint. For a domain with a real favicon it returns HTTP 200 and the image. For a domain with no discoverable favicon it returns HTTP 404. Square Town reads only the status:
| Google's answer | What Square Town does |
|---|---|
| 200 | Your square shows your icon; clown = 0 |
| 404 | Your square shows 🤡, your domain joins the Hall of Clowns, the feed says "🤡 yourdomain has no favicon and joins the Hall of Clowns"; clown = 1 |
| Anything else (timeout, 5xx) | Treated as transient; you're left as "unknown" — no clown, no announcement |
That's it. Square Town doesn't crawl your HTML, doesn't parse <link> tags, and doesn't render your page. It trusts Google's crawler, which is the same source the wall uses to draw every icon (through Square Town's own /favicon/:domain proxy, cached at the edge for a day). If Google can't find your favicon, neither can the wall, so a clown is the honest answer.
The ?sz=64 matters: Square Town asks for a 64-pixel icon so it has enough resolution for the 3D wall and the enlarged view on the Throne. Google scales whatever you have; you don't need a 64×64 file specifically. See favicon design tips for 16px if you want it to look good small.
How to get out of the Hall of Clowns
Three steps. The middle one is the annoying one.
1. Add a favicon to your site
The full walkthrough is in how to add a favicon. The short version:
- Put a file called
favicon.icoat the root of your domain (https://yourdomain.com/favicon.ico). Browsers and Google both check this path by default even with no HTML tag. - Or, better, add a link tag in your
<head>:<link rel="icon" href="/icon.png" type="image/png">(or an SVG:<link rel="icon" href="/icon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">). Do both if you can. - Make sure the file actually returns 200 with an image content type. A
favicon.icothat is really an HTML 404 page is the single most common reason a site "has a favicon" and still gets a clown. - Serve it on the exact domain you gave Square Town. If you bought the square as
example.combut onlywww.example.comserves an icon, add the icon (or a redirect) on the bare domain too.
2. Wait for Google's favicon service to notice
Square Town's check reads Google's cache, and Google refreshes favicons on its own schedule. There is no button on Square Town's side to hurry it. Practically: publish the icon, confirm it loads in a browser tab, then check https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=yourdomain.com&sz=64 yourself. When that URL shows your icon rather than an error, you're ready.
3. Press "I fixed my favicon"
Click your square on the wall and hit the recheck button. Square Town re-runs the same request. If you were a clown and now you're not, the feed announces "🎈 yourdomain added a favicon and escaped the Hall of Clowns", your square redraws with your icon, and your domain drops off the list. Every open browser sees it live.
Rechecks are public and unlimited — anyone can press it on any square, not just the owner. If Google still returns 404, nothing changes and you can try again later.
Why favicons matter beyond Square Town
The clown is a joke; the underlying point isn't. A favicon is the smallest piece of branding on the web and one of the most-seen.
- Browser tabs. With ten tabs open, the icon is the only thing users can see. A blank globe means "which one was that?"
- Bookmarks and history. Same icon, same recognition, every time someone saves or revisits your page.
- Search results. Google shows a site's favicon next to its listing in search results, on mobile and desktop. A missing icon there is a missing chance to be recognised before the click.
- Home-screen shortcuts, link previews, reading lists. Everything that summarises a page borrows the icon.
- Directories and walls. Square Town is the extreme case — your favicon is your entry — but plenty of link directories and start pages pull it too. Read why favicons beat pixels for why Square Town built the whole wall on them.
If Google's service can't find your favicon, all of the above is showing a blank. The clown just makes it visible.
Mini how-to: the two-minute favicon
If you have nothing at all, this gets you out of the Hall of Clowns:
- Make a square image — 512×512 PNG or an SVG. A bold letter on a solid colour reads at 16px; fine detail doesn't.
- Save it as
/favicon.svg(or/favicon.png) and, for older clients, export a/favicon.icotoo. - Add to
<head>:<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">and<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="any">. - Deploy, open your site in a fresh tab, confirm the icon appears.
- Check
google.com/s2/favicons?domain=yourdomain&sz=64until it shows your icon. - Click your square on square.pov.town and press "I fixed my favicon".
For static-site generators, frameworks and edge cases (subpaths, redirects, Cloudflare Pages), see the longer how-to-add-a-favicon guide.
FAQ
What is the Hall of Clowns?
The Hall of Clowns is the public list, in Square Town's side panel, of squares whose site has no favicon. Those squares show a 🤡 instead of an icon until the owner adds one and passes a recheck. See the glossary entry.
How does Square Town decide my site has no favicon?
It requests https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=yourdomain&sz=64. HTTP 200 means you have an icon; HTTP 404 means you don't and you get a clown. Other responses are treated as transient and leave you unmarked.
I have a favicon. Why am I still a clown?
Usually one of: the icon is only on www. and not the bare domain (or vice versa); favicon.ico returns an HTML page instead of an image; the icon is served with a wrong content type or blocked from crawlers; or Google's cache hasn't refreshed yet. Check the Google URL above — Square Town only sees what it sees.
How do I leave the Hall of Clowns?
Add a favicon, wait until Google's favicon service returns it, then click your square on the wall and press "I fixed my favicon". If the recheck passes, the feed announces your escape and the clown is gone.
Does being a clown affect my square's price or ownership?
No. Your square is still yours, still counts clicks and views, and its eviction price is unchanged. The only effect is cosmetic — and public.
Can someone else recheck my square?
Yes. Rechecks are public and unthrottled; anyone can click a clown square and press the button. It can only ever help you.
Put your favicon on the wall
1 square = $1, one-time, no account. Paste a URL, pick a cell, done. Open the wall →