If you’re constantly benchmarking new WordPress sites, especially fresh installs, it can be annoying as a missing favicon will generate a 404 error in speed testing tools.
But great news! If you already install our Perfmatters plugin as part of your regular workflow, we now have a simple option to generate a blank favicon on your site with just code (data). You can read more about this in our in-depth post on how to manually create a blank favicon.
Add a Blank Favicon
To add a blank favicon simply click into the Perfmatters settings, click on the “Extras” tab, and enable the “Add Blank Favicon” option.

This will automatically generate the following code in the header of your WordPress site to fix the 404 error.
<link href="data:image/x-icon;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQEAYAAABPYyMiAAAABmJLR0T///////8JWPfcAAAACXBIWXMAAABIAAAASABGyWs+AAAAF0lEQVRIx2NgGAWjYBSMglEwCkbBSAcACBAAAeaR9cIAAAAASUVORK5CYII=" rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" />