IE problems with multiple favicon links

Only one webpage favicon can be displayed for a page. If a series of favicon links is presented to a user agent, you might reasonably expect only the last favicon link to be used. Firefox appears to gracefully handle multiple favicon links.

Unfortunately, multiple favicon links will frequently confuse IE. IE appears to assume that one and only one favicon link will be presented for a page. IE appears to process sequential favicon links as though each link is the only one. This apparently leads to corrupt favicon pointers: IE seems to lose track of its favicons.

Among other perverse behaviors, IE may then:

• refuse to obtain any more webpage favicons


• "lock" an inappropriate icon into the address bar, displaying the locked icon for every page


• display the webpage favicon of a deleted favorite

Because IE does not process favicon links with rel values of "icon", favicon links recognized by other browsers do not contribute to this problem.