(Meaningless) Web Awards
Date: January 17, 2006
You've seen them. I have to admit, I had one on this site last year, begging a click through to 'win' this supposed major award known as the diamond web award. I put one up on my ever popular Miserable Melodies site since it gets so much traffic. I got all of my clicks and crossed the 100 click through mark. What did it get me? A graphic that said I had won an award, and an e-mail solicitation to purchase a plaque. So I can now boast that I have an award winning website. Caught up in a desire to proclaim "we have won awards!", I tried it on this site for the heck of it.
What Does an Award Mean?
Does it mean that you are a kick butt web designer? Does it indicate and prove that you an expert in your field? Does it make you look good to potential customers? Does it mean that you stand out amongst your your colleagues?
Did you earn an award because of the following:
- A panel of expert judges reviewed the site and gave it high marks
- The site is slick and state of the art
- The site contains no broken links
- The site has great navigation
- The site has quick to load, attractive graphics
- The site is user friendly
Sadly, no.
What does winning one of the awards pictured above mean?
- You begged all of your friends and family to click the $#@!!! award tile and vote for you.
The Diamond Web Awards has 'levels' of winners. I went to their site to get the levels; I know level 1 is 100 click throughs, and level 2 is somewhere around 250 - but I couldn't check as their site is FUBAR. Or at least their server is. I got a screenful of HTML instead of a 'displayed' web page. Makes me want to brag about winning one of their 'awards' (NOT).
TOTALLY Useless
This is the most ridiculous web award I've found. Going to the site, it says "Give yourself an award!" and gives you the code to paste into your web page. Click the icon to check it out. It says "give your visitors confidence this way!" Right. Means I went to a website, grabbed the image, and gave it to myself no matter how lousy my website is...
There Are Some Legitimate Web Awards Out There
These do exist and they really do go through a panel of judges. It would be a prestigious thing to win one of these because it actually means something. They actually grade your site that you submit and get back to you within a couple of weeks, a month, a quarter, whatever, and let you know. Below are a couple of them that I have actually applied for.
'Real' Web Awards:
 World Wide Web Awards |
 Treasures of the Web |
So, if I pick up either of these awards, I guess I will have bragging rights. But until then, I don't put much weight into these so-called awards. Maybe I should start handing out awards....what the heck. The spacerock meaningless web award. That would be fun...