Daily Search Forum Recap: May 18, 2026

Google Search is testing new designs for the default favicons it shows in the search results. This is when Google is not showing the site’s favicon or the site does not have a favicon, Google will show this default favicon.

Google Search seems to have accidentally leaked its various AI Search options and features, that go beyond just AI Mode, which it recently launched. 47 different AI Search options are shown including Info Sleuth, Allium, QTalk, MedExplainer, Fantasy Sports Researcher, Smart Kitchen and many more.

Google updated its image SEO best practices and Google Discover documentation to clarify how Google picks a preferred image thumbnail for Google Search and Google Discover. Google wrote it “uses both schema.org markup and the og:image meta tag as sources when determining image thumbnails in Google Search and Discover.”