My First Blog Award

(Originally Posted 12/6/2010, Updated 16/6/2010)
To be honest, I am not big on Blog Awards. I don't blog to receive an award, and I don't pay much attention if someone else has an award. Mainly I think it is because most of the time I think they are some junky thing made up by someone in order to drum up links back to themselves and raise their search ranking.

Call me a cynic, but I think the vast majority of awards given out are just a marketing exercise, rather than something issued by fellow bloggers to recognise truly outstanding other blogs. It is probably more productive to just post comments and provide links back to them - but being the infrequent blogger and less frequent reader that I am, laziness and lack of time stops me from doing so as often as I would like.

I think I was listed as a finalist in something a while ago... Where was it? Can't remember.

Anyway, I think this is the first time I have been sent a badge to pretend that I won something for blogging. I know that I am being used, but what the heck?

This one is from medicalbillingandcoding.org, presumably a web site that either wants to:

1. make commissions from referring people to medical billing and coding courses, or 
2. a web site that wants to rapidly build up as much traffic as possible and then sell the domain to some adult site for quick cash.

Then again, who am I to say no to flashy web badges? So here you go:

 

Admittedly, the first one is a bit tacky and self-promotional, but the second is nicely generic. Too bad they don't have transparent GIF or PNG versions (I subsequently found a transparent PNG). They will obviously need to rebuild the website and links if they ever give out more awards next year.

If you wish to follow the links then you can enter the following URLs to see what it is all about, but don't blame me if the domain name has been sold on and you get viruses, malware, and a free subscription to Foot-Lover's Weekly:

• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/topmedical/
  
• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/top-blogs/
  
• http://www.awardingtheweb.com

(Update 16/6/2010)

Interestingly I have found these guys have been working on several other "Top Blog" Awards, such as:

• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/top_allergy/
• http://www.onlinecollegesanduniversities.com/top_ethics/
• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/top_diet/

It must be a successful SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) technique, associating your website with other quality, high-readership websites (well, except for this one, of course). Presumably all the recipients are so grateful that they give links back to the award-presenter.

Since I am not convinced of the benevolence of these awards I am, on principle, not giving a direct backlink... does that make me even lower than a cheapskate? Can a web award be taken away after it has been given? Or will my ungratefulness cause my award to surreptitiously disappear into the ether? Well, for the sake of posterity, I suppose should keep a screenshot of my award here, in all of its transient, web-based glory.