Favicon.ico in logs = Bookmark?

does a favicon.ico occurance in logs mean bookmarking?

[killroy]

Just launched a new site with only a fraction of my pages googled yet. Traffic very low, but the search keywords are spot on and I'm quite happy with rankings so far.

I've just seen my first favicon.ico in my logs and was wondering if it guranteed meant a bookmark. Is there anything else that requests a favicon.ico without bookmarking?

I know Mozilla shows it in the tabs, but I should be able to tell from the user_agent and timing. Do any of you do bookmarking tracking based on favicon.ico?

Hmm I just went back to the log and saw the Mozilla/5.0 UA :( I guess no bookmariking luck for me. I guess that I can't tell if they bookmark as they won't re-request the file at a later time.

Anyways, what are the general guidelines for bookmark tracking?

Thanks,

SN

[amznVibe]

Only if the client is using Internet Explorer (for windows).
Mozilla and Opera access the favicon when the site is loaded.

So if you can detect a genuine IE user agent when favicon is accessed,
then yes, you are probably being bookmarked.

I've never seen a stats program that tries to track this though.

[moltar]

I just implemented a technique on my site, don't know how it will turn out.

I have a javascript that onclick prompts user to add a bookmark. And the URL for that bookmark is the same as current URL plus?f=b (from=bookmark). As far as I know that works only in IE, and only if user actually clicks on the "add to bookmark" link on my page. I don't know if that many people do it, but I gave it a try. Waiting to see some results.

[dotbiz]

I've never seen a stats program that tries to track this though.

I think the new version of AWSTATS is trying to do that.

[killroy]

Not really worried about that, since I've always writen my own stats packages. Just was wondering about hte techniques.

The explicit link method may apply once the page is more stablished and has more navigactional clout. In the moment the pages are more like documents, and all these extra bits don't have any space as yet.

SN

[karmov]

I use AWSTATS and it does indeed count people who bookmark, by what method I'm not sure but this seems like a reasonable explanation.