Friday, we reported at Search Engine Land that Google is testing favicons (the icons you see in the URL bar) in Google AdWords ads. The test seems to be limited to the European market. Here is a screen shot taken from one of our members at Search Engine Roundtable Forums:

Notice the bottom two ads on the right have little icons on the left of the display URL. Those icons seem to be from the favicon.ico file on those respective sites. For example, eBay's is at ebay.com/favicon.ico.

There are several members reporting seeing this at WebmasterWorld and one at Search Engine Roundtable Forums. In fact, one received confirmation from his AdWords representative that this is something Google is testing on a very limited closed beta. Kerstin, who posted this, said:

Spoke to our AM at Google this morning, they've confirmed that they're testing. It's limited (for both advertisers and searchers) and closed.

What was interesting was just a few months ago, Google was testing favorite icons in the search results, the free listings.

It seems like if you are in the UK area, you may stumble across this test every now and then.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

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