How does AWStats determine that a user has bookmarked your site?

Question

I was just reading that there is a feature in AWStats that can estimate how many users have added your site to their favorites/bookmarks. How does this work considering that AwStats is just a log analyzer?

Answer 1

AWStats calculates that statistic by tracking hits to favicon.ico. In older versions of IE, that file would only be hit if the user bookmarked your site. In newer versions (and all recent versions of Firefox), that file is hit regardless. The statistic is useful for IE6 and below, but in general it is flawed.