UCMore

favicon.ico

[Stefan]

I only found two old threads wrt UCmore, using the site search... figured niether were applicable so I'm starting a new one.

Starting a few weeks ago, I started seeing a lot of hits on my favicon.ico file from UCmore. I know it's a toolbar but I don't want to install it just to find out what's going on.

As far as I can see the favicon.ico hits aren't associated with the taking of any other files. Does anyone know why this thing is just grabbing that one file so often?

[keyplyr]

Hi Stefan,

Don't know which 2 threads you read, but I thought it was a nuisance also until
it was determined through testing that this toolbar bot requests favicons in order to display them next to your listing in their SERPs. How efficiently this works is another matter, since it seems like they request it an awful lot.

But IMO this is pretty neat since it is a minor bandwidth issue (43 bytes for me) and an enhancement for my listing compared to NOT having it up there when the competition HAS it.

The resulting traffic is difficult to judge since the favicon reference is not included in the refers of your visitors. But if you find this request bothersome, you can stop it with:

RewriteEngine on 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^UCmore$ [NC] 
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^-?$ 
RewriteRule favicon\.ico$ - [F] 

(code thanks to claus)

[Stefan]

Many thanks, keyplr.

As you say, it's not much bandwidth... if they're only using it to stick beside my site listing in their serps, then not a problem.

Thanks again

Stefan