Why does the Gamil favicon on my IE Favorites bar always appear so blah?

July 10, 2011 6:32 PM

I like to use the Favorites bar in IE8 and IE9 for frequently accessed web sites, such as iGoogle, Google Mail, Google Reader, and (of course) Ask Metafilter. I like the favicons that appear there, but, for some reason, the Gmail favicon always appears as the generic, IE website icon. See image link here. I've tried everything I can think of to make it look "nice" like the others, but it always looks like this, even on other computers with the Favorites linked through Xmarks. Why is this and can anyone offer a solution? Thanks!
posted by Rad_Boy to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Best answer: Did you bookmark gmail.com or mail.google.com? gmail.com is not the actual site, it's just a wildcard redirector. When the browser tries to request gmail.com/favicon.ico, it gets redirected to mail.google.com/mail/ which is not an icon file, so IE thinks the site doesn't have a favicon and uses the default icon. Bookmark the actual gmail site (mail.google.com) instead, because mail.google.com/favicon.ico is a valid URL of an actual icon.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:40 PM on July 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: That worked great. Thank you!
posted by Rad_Boy at 8:32 AM on July 11, 2011