How do I know if someone is bookmarking my site?

[DonX]

How do I know if someone is bookmarking my site? Do I need some kind of script? How do I go about doing this?
Thanks,
DonX |rasta|

[Surfn]

Look for fingerprints on you pics... ;)

[mist]

Well, you could check your server log or stats program, and see how many visitors that comes from a referring url, deduct that number from your total amount of visitors that day and there you should have a rough estimate.

Mist

[Surfn]

Seriously this time - if you have a decent server stats program look for "Direct Address" or something similar and that will give you the number you are looking for.

[shags]

Stats: 7/1/2004 to 7/31/2004
Documents not found:
/favicon.ico 1859

[Useless]

Originally posted by shags
Stats: 7/1/2004 to 7/31/2004
Documents not found:
/favicon.ico 1859

Wouldn't anybody coming to your site, no matter from where, produce a 404 on the favicon, assuming you do not have a favicon? I don't understand why this would be bookmark specific.

[Useless]

Originally posted by Surfn
Look for fingerprints on you pics... ;)

I was thinking more along the lines of dogeared web pages.

[shags]

Originally posted by Useless Warrior
Wouldn't anybody coming to your site, no matter from where, produce a 404 on the favicon, assuming you do not have a favicon? I don't understand why this would be bookmark specific.
The question was ”How do I know if someone is bookmarking my site?” not how many surfer coming back using bookmark.
From favicon.ico you can see how many bookmark the site gets.

[valvet]

Thats a pretty nice trick, thanks :P

[Surfn]

Originally posted by shags
The question was ”How do I know if someone is bookmarking my site?” not how many surfer coming back using bookmark.
From favicon.ico you can see how many bookmark the site gets. That only tells you for one day, which is pretty useless to me as my number of new bookmarkers vary daily. If you need to know your average number of bookmarkers for a given period then it totally worthless. I can produce hard numbers via my stats for potential advertisers.

[Useless]

Originally posted by shags
The question was ”How do I know if someone is bookmarking my site?” not how many surfer coming back using bookmark.
From favicon.ico you can see how many bookmark the site gets.

It is my understanding that IE attempts to find the favicon during every visit, regardless of whether or not the surfer bookmarks your page. Though it would not be uncommon for me to be wrong about such things. It happens.

[urb]

If you don't have a favicon then it will produce a 404 when someone using IE bookmarks you. This happens usually once with IE at the moment that they bookmark you.

However, Mozilla and other browsers automatically pick up the favicon to display it in the address line of those browsers without any bookmarking taking place.

So measuring bookmarking activity by the favicon requests or 404s is not really gonna work.

[selena]

Okay, I am not too proud to display my newbie ignorance.

What on earth is favicon? I have seen such a thing in my server stats, and had no idea what it means.

I did try to look it up, and the best I could gather was that it was some kind of icon. Of course, my gathering may be grossly inaccurate.

|newbie|

[Surfn]

That's an icon of a specific size that you place in the root of your domain. It shows up when someone bookmarks your site in their bookmark list.

[Useless]

Originally posted by urb
If you don't have a favicon then it will produce a 404 when someone using IE bookmarks you. This happens usually once with IE at the moment that they bookmark you.

However, Mozilla and other browsers automatically pick up the favicon to display it in the address line of those browsers without any bookmarking taking place.

So measuring bookmarking activity by the favicon requests or 404s is not really gonna work.

Thanks for clarifying that, Urb. I knew I wasn't completely nuts, just partially.

Selena, you can read a bit more about those damned favicons here (http://www.webdevelopersjournal.com/articles/favicon.html)

[selena]

Thanks, Surfn and Useless Warrior. |cool|
That clears it up for me.

|newbie|
~selena

[Useless]

It's all Surfn, but I'm always willing to take credit. U B welcome.:D