AWStats “Add to Favorites”
Do you also get these weird “Add to Favorites” reports from AWStats ?
Of course, this is too nice to be true!
How does AWStats estimate the “Add to Favorites” ?
Microsoft Internet Explorer was the first browser to display a small image next to the address of a web site. This small image is called favicon and it was loaded from a file located at /favicon.ico. This favicon was only loaded when the user decided to add the web page to his favorites (bookmarks).
AWStats uses this feature and counts the number of hits on the /favicon.ico file by users of Internet Explorer and compares the count to the total number of Internet Explorer users. As Internet Explorer was by far the most popular browser, this gave an accurate estimate of the percentage of visitors who added the web site to their favorites.
Why it does not work anymore
This estimate is not valid anymore for two main reasons:
– since mid-2006, when the Google Toolbar is combined with Internet Explorer, there are repeated hits on /favicon.ico even when the web site is not added to the favorites.
– since the beginning of 2007, the new Internet Explorer version 7 becomes popular. This new version of the browser tries to load the favicon each time a web page is viewed.
The future
Although it would be technically possible to create a work-around that would exclude Google Toolbar users and Internet Explorer version 7 from the stats, this cannot be viewed as a good solution, as we can expect that the number of older Microsoft browsers will rapidly decrease.
We believe that “Add to Favorites” will disappear in future releases of AWStats.
August 18th, 2007 at 2:12 am
Thanks…I was wondering that myself. And I had heard about the favicon issue. The interesting thing is that my “added to favorites” stats changed over time in a way that made sense.
As the site got better, the % rose. Who knows. I hope people are bookmarking!
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:14 pm
Thanks for pointing us to the Forum, because my initial search concerned the estimated Add to Favourites note, and that subject has been well covered here.
Edited by admin (off-topic)
Keep up the good work….peace and love
Syd Burke
December 11th, 2007 at 5:06 am
That’s for the info, when I saw 148% I almost fell over 🙂
July 27th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
Thanks, that helps to understand my statistics – particularly given that a number of my visitors use firefox or macs.
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:29 am
Thanks for a clear and informative post, we were wondering just how it calculated the figures as some were up around 150% which seems a little impossible to say the least.
It would be a shame if the statistic was removed from Awstats as compared to a fix being made for it, it is a handy little stat as some of our clients like to get an idea on that.
November 21st, 2008 at 2:00 am
Great explanation. It would be sweet if there was a true way to track that figure.