Need favicon expert advice

Favicon mystery

[walrus]

Ive posted this question twice in general forum and got no reply from anyone.Its just strange to see the same computer grabbing only the favicon 5 to 10 times every day.
Heres my original post
[webmasterworld.com...]

Heres a log string

2004-02-22 14:56:58 65.129.5.0 - GET /favicon.ico - 200 0 549 277 437 80 HTTP/1.1 Mozilla/4.0+(compatible;+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+Hotbar+4.3.1.0;++MSN+9.0;+MSNbMSNI;+MSNmen-us;+MSNcIA;+MPLUS) - -

Its always shows browsers like this and sometimes different servers soi dont know what to think.
Would really appreciate some help with this

+Hotbar+4.3.1.0;++MSN+9.0;+MSNbMSNI;+MSNmen-us;+MSNcIA;+MPLUS
+MSIE+6.0;+Windows+NT+5.1;+.NET+CLR+1.1.4322;++MSN+9.0;+MSNbMSNI;+MSNmen-us;+MSNcIA;+MPLUS

[Yidaki]

Favicon is a shortcut icon (bookmark icon) that appears in many browsers in the location bar in front of a site's url. Favicon requests are a good sign that people obviously like your site and bookmark it. There are also plugins and some browsers that automatically request and/or update a site's favicon. Nothing strange here.

Read here all about the Favicon [google.com].

[walrus]

Ive been designing and changing the favicons for a while but i never noticed this activity till recently.
It is a great method of tracking bookmarks but i read that you can really only count the IE as some others auto request it like you said.AUTOUPDATE ,that really makes sense.
I kept cheking arins and it was always a differnt ip with that extension or similar so i realized it was more than one person. Never would have thought of an auotupdating feature.
But why every day? or several times a day from same user?
Thanks a lot!
Very much appreciated

[Hagstrom]

but i read that you can really only count the IE as some others auto request it like you said.

That's true. I always look at the time interval between the browser reading the HTML and asking for the favicon.

If the favicon is requested before the browser has had a chance to receive style sheets, images etc., I assume that it was auto requested.

[walrus]

Thanks again,
Thats good to know.
When you said some auto update, did you mean when people actually visit the website or it just checks for favicons? The thing is the pages or images never load for these ips. after tyhe favicon.
They only get it and i never see the ip again.

[Hagstrom]

I’m not sure, if you’re addressing Yidaki or me.

I just looked at my logs: In January the favicon.ico was requested 176 times and so far it has been 150 times this month. Only in 3 instances was the favicon requested without html-files - and in none of those cases did the User Agent Field resemble the one in you original post.

[walrus]

Thanks Hagstrom! My meager system has been down since about the time you posted that.Just got back online.
I was kind of just responding to all info presented.
Any idea what those are in user agent field?
MSNbMSNI;+MSNmen-us;+MSNcIA;+MPLUS
i also see these MSNbVZ02; +MSNcOTH

Cant find anything in a google search except logs,
wonder if its maybe a custom application?
Thanks again!

[keyplyr]

walrus - there's a toolbar (or an add-on) called UCmore that grabs favicons everytime the user searches. It then uses these icons in its SERPS, next to your site's listing. The requests will come from different IPs since it is browser based.

There were several threads on UCmore at one time but they're all gone now, except this one [webmasterworld.com] which doesn't say much. Some webmasters were even discussing how to block the redundant favicon requests while still allowing the users to access their sites. Annoyed me for a week or two then stopped abruptly.

[walrus]

Thanks Keyplyr!
Im having trouble with loose Ram so i havnt had time to check much of the suggestions made here yet.
Lucky to get this off before i crash again.