Preferred way to use favicons?

Question

I was trying to add a favicon to a website earlier and looked for a better way to implement this than to dump a favicon.ico file in the root of the website.

Answer 1

I think the most reliable method is the simply added the favicon.ico file to the root of your website.

I don't think there is any need for a meta tag unless you want to manually override the default favicon, but I was unable to find any research to support my argument.