How can you tell if you've been bookmarked?

[jkruit]

I was reading another great thread in the forum today and I realized, if I had an idea how many sites were bookmarking our site, I could tell if we are acheiving our goal. Of course, one goal is to sell product, but the other goal is for our web site to have the most imformative and helpful information in our industry.

Are there programs or something people use to see if they have been bookmarked?

Thanks
Janine

[ritualcoffee]

well - if you see the number of "no referrer" go up...or you have a bookmark button on your site that will supply a unique bookmark url that redirects to your homepage...

otherwise I don't know.

[diddlydazz]

favicon.ico in your logs is a good (but not perfect) indicator.

Dazz

[oilman]

Essentially a bookmarked visitor is hard to spot since they show up without a referrer and get lumped in with type-ins and links from emails.

That said, it is possible to track how many folks have bookmarked your site from IE via the favicon. There's good thread about it here [webmasterworld.com].

[ggrot]

>> how many sites were bookmarking our site

Are you sure you arent talking about simple links? Most search engines allow for reverse link lookups, and you can always examine your logs for referral data.

[rogerd]

I'm with ggrot, Janine, I think you mean how many sites are linking to you. That is really important for traffic and is also one indicator that you have a popular site.

For plenty of discussion on how to get more links, check out [webmasterworld.com...] .

To see how many sites are linking to you now (that the search engines know about, anyway), you can go to each search engine or use the Linkage Reporter at [searchengineworld.com...] .

If you really did mean bookmarks (in an individual user's browser), then for favicon.ico requests. Since Internet Explorer is over 90% of the browser market, this is a pretty good indicator. Note that this will show you how many people are adding your site to their favorites in a given time period, but won't tell you anything about whether they ever USE that bookmark.

[jkruit]

Thanks all!!!

I thought I was asking such a simple thing and it turns out to be a bit complex. I really did want to know about the bookmarks, So, I guess I'll try to get the favicon added. But also, thanks for the link checker! That's a good tool to have.

You guys are the best.

Janine

[rogerd]

You don't have to add the favicon file, Janine, although I think it's a nice touch that costs nothing more than a few minutes of design time. If you don't have the file, look in your error logs - requests will be listed there.

[marysz]

I will check my WebTrends logs and see how they distinguish bookmarks, referrers etc.

mary

[perch]

123LogAnalyzer can report bookmarks.

[feeder]

"You don't have to add the favicon file, Janine, although I think it's a nice touch that costs nothing more than a few minutes of design time"

How do you add a "favicon file"?

Cheers

[bruhaha]

How do you add a "favicon file"?

Adding the file is easy --you simply place the file in your root directory. (You can actually put a different icon in each directory of your site, if you want to, but most folks just use one for the whole site.)

But I assume you want to know how to come up with a graphic in this format. That's not too hard either. There are a number of software programs to convert an existing graphic from bitmap to the favicon (*.ico) format (some can also start with other format,such as jpeg), or make one from scratch.

You might start with the classic freebie "irfanview" (available at tucows and other sites), or the older, free version of "QTam bitmap to icon".

[jkruit]

Again,

Thanks for all the valuable information.

I certainly couldn't do my job without you guys at webmaster world.

Thanks again
Janine

[pedros]

You can have a look at the excellent site www.favicon.com for more information and ways to create your own favicon file.

<no promotional URL drops, please>

(edited by: Marcia at 8:39 am (utc) on April 3, 2002)

[tedster]

Check our Graphics forum and the Site Search function at the top of the page.

There have been some excellent threads here in the past year about favicons. These threads hold more than information (plenty of that, certainly) -- they also hold the valuable experience of our members.