Easystats Advanced Web Statistics favorites estimate

How accurate is it?

[vik_c]

Advanced Web Statistics provides an estimate about the number of people who added the web site to favorites. Would anyone have a clue about the accuracy of these numbers? The software itself calls it 'estimated'. So I ask.

[Adam_T]

As far as I know there is no way to record these actions without something in place on the site - Maybe the estimate is calculated of people who leave the site then return to the direct address or something?

I think Java may be able to tag favourites or you can use a button for the action, not entirely sure tbh.

[mack]

I gave this a little though a while back and came to the conclusion it was based on requests for favicon.ico

IE only requests this file if the site as added to your favourites.

Now a lot of browsers request the favico.ico even if the site is not in favourites or bookmarked.

I think awstats must base it on a percentage. So if it knows 2% of IE users add you to bookmarks, then it carries this percentage across all visits. It would be a pretty rough estimate, but without installing server side software to acuratly track, I don't see how else it could be done more acuratly.

Mack.

[Tidal2]

Something else that could throw it out, if the favicon.ico looks good anyway.

There's at least one site doing a list of favourite icons. I traced back through the logs one of mine once. Its was temporarily in that sites top 10, so lots of views from the site.

Also you could get hotlinks to the favicon.ico file I suppose, its just another image after all.

[vik_c]

Thanks for the input. I guess I'll have a favicon.ico file and script in place for more accurate information.