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On Awstats, one of the sections displays as it follows:

Successful hits on favicon.ico -> 49.9%

Then, under 404s, i have the following:

Document Not Found (hits on favicon excluded)

Therefore, if the 50.1% of errors on favicon are due to 404s, I wouldn't be able to see them.

I'm pretty sure, the errors on favicon are not 404s, as i have extensivly checked (I might be wrong though). If that assumption is correct, how come 50.1% are not successful hits? Is it because some browsers/tablets/phones don't support it?

Additionally, I store the favicon icon in a folder, but a favicon.ico empty file always appears on my root folder if deleted. That file was replaced with mine, so the error should also not be there.

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  • Is the /favicon.ico file in the root automatically generated by your host?
    – MrWhite
    Dec 31, 2012 at 16:38
  • I believe so. I don't upload the file, but if i delete it, it seems to reappear somehow.
    – riseagainst
    Dec 31, 2012 at 16:49

1 Answer 1

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Successful hits on favicon.ico -> 49.9%

This means that 49.9% of unique site visitors successfully requested favicon.ico. I don't think it necessarily means that 50.1% were "unsuccessful" in the sense that it resulted in error - it just means that 50.1% of visitors did not request the favicon, or maybe they did but was perhaps cached (304 - Not Modified)?

If you have a favicon.ico file then I'm pretty sure it is safe to assume that you are not getting any 404's as a result of requests for the favicon.ico file. (Unless your server is broken?!)

--EDIT--

I mentioned in comments that I have a site that reports just 7.2% "successful hits" on the favicon.ico file. This corresponds to 157 / 2175 (Unique) Visitors (the 2nd column in the AwStats table) for the month in question.

Now I've just had a look at the raw access log... there are a TOTAL of 157 requests for favicon.ico, 140 returned a 200 (OK) status, 4 returned a 304 (Not Modified) and 15 returned 301 (I think as a result of server security). There are no 404 or other error states for the favicon, so I can only conclude that the "unsuccessful" 92.8% of unique visitors simply did not request the favicon.ico file!?

Yes, it would seem that "successful" is rather missleading. If all requests were deemed "successful" then you would perhaps expect to see 100% reported, but this is not the case if not all "unique visitors" request the favicon.ico file.

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  • Maybe, but by bad grammar then. A successful percentage implies that the remainder is unsuccessful, correct? So, you believe that returning visitors who already have downloaded the .ico file don't attempt to download it, and that's why 50.1% don't attempt to reach the file? I'm just asking because you said "I don't think".
    – riseagainst
    Dec 31, 2012 at 16:49
  • Well it may seem like bad grammer, but it depends on what the AwStats definition of a "successful hit" is (which I can't seem to find). Does "unsuccessful" == error? A "successful hit" is usually one that returns a status code of 200. If the client requests the same file and it's already cached then a 304 "Not Modified" should be returned. Is this considered successful or unsuccessful? It's certainly not an error. But I'm not sure. The other point is that my "successful hits" are considerably lower than yours! On one site it is 7.2% - I can't believe I have 92.8% error rate on favicon?!
    – MrWhite
    Dec 31, 2012 at 17:38
  • Wow, that is pretty weird. Awstats has a few flaws that i have noticed, that may just (or may not) be another one of them.
    – riseagainst
    Dec 31, 2012 at 17:46
  • On that one site (7.2%) Do you have a lot more visits tan others in which the percentage is close to mine(49.9)?
    – riseagainst
    Jan 1, 2013 at 17:11
  • That particular site has more visitors than some but I don't think the number of visitors is particularly relevant since I have lower traffic sites that have both lower and higher "successful hits" percentages, but none are as high as yours. The highest I've seen is 31.4% on a very low traffic site. I've updated my answer with a breakdown of the stats to see where the figures are coming from.
    – MrWhite
    Jan 2, 2013 at 21:05

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