Not Really Awarding the Web
This morning, I opened an email that had way too many exclamation marks for before-noon reading:
Congratulations! Emma Lee here, and your blog, Halt Near, has received our
2010 Top 40 Horses Blogs award!
I am sure some of my readers have received this email as well, because I recognized some of your blogs in the list of the Top 40.
Also in the Top 40: at least three blogs that haven’t posted a thing in 2010. Not in the Top 40: awesome blogs like Behind the Bit and The Literary Horse. [This was true when I viewed the page, at least.]
Even if they hadn’t managed to get my blog’s name wrong in both the email and on their Top 40 list, the above issues would have been enough to flag the entire situation as something less than legitimate.
But wait! There’s more!
Apparently, awards are given out based on reader nominations. Again, I point to the differences between my little corner of egoism, with my twelve dearly loved but, still, not numerous, readers, and Behind the Bit, who recently logged 1,000 readers.
I’m not buying rotten fish from Denmark, thanks.
A little more investigation pulled up a widely-reposted blog about why Awarding the Web is a scam. The author’s main contention is with the requirement that you post the award’s linked badge “or else.” I agree with him—conditional awards suck and are not really awards at all. You can find a full version of his post here.
But I’d like to add something else.
Links are the crack cocaine of the web. They are still a very influential factor in determining search engine rankings and, therefor, highly coveted by everyone. However, search engines have become more discriminatory in how they handle links, due to massive link farming abuse. Lots of incoming links are valuable. Outgoing links not so much.
So let’s say I accept this supposed award and put it on my site. Where will it link to? The Awarding the Web site (which actually exists)? Nope. Onlineschools.org.
Mmm-kay. Go to onlineschools.org. Go all through that site. Find the page(s) that link this wonderful, pretigious award list, and all the other wonderful, prestigious awards being given out by Awarding the Web.
I’ll wait.
...
No? Yeah, there are no links from the hosting site at all. You have to know the blog award page exists to find it. So then I went looking for other blog categories. But they are the same—you have to know they exist to find them. There’s certainly no list of the varied awards being given out, not even on the Awarding the Web site itself.
Think about it.
Awarding the Web is so gosh-darn-proud of blogs and so gee-golly eager to recognize great bloggers that they do. not. provide. any. way. to. find. their. awards.
And why are they hosting their award pages on some unrelated “online schools” website, anyway? According to the Disclaimer page at awardingtheweb.com:
We here at Awarding The Web work hard to find the best blogs, and to distribute our awards to those we find with the help of sponsor sites. Our affiliation with any of our sponsor sites are only in this regard. We are not employed by any of our sponsor sites, nor do we receive any financial payments from them.
If that’s true, the people behind Awarding the Web are even bigger suckers than the ones who think this is a legitimate award.
Here’s what the sponsor sites get: hundreds (at least) of inbound links to their domains.
Here’s what it costs the sponsor sites: [long pause]
Bandwith? Meh. Something like this is not going to generate bandwidth worth talking about.
If you actually find one of the so-called award pages, take the time to notice the links. Or lack of links. The award pages list the URLs but don’t hyperlink them. What’s more, the URLs are images, so you can’t even copy/paste them. Not only are they making it hard as hell for visitors to go view the blogs, they have set the page up so that it absolutely denies the blogs any benefit from being referenced on the host site.
Awesome. So I can link to a completely irrelevant site and increase their page ranking, and they will make it hard as hell for people to visit my site while denying me any page ranking at all. That’s my reward? Let me get right on it.
[It occurs to me, belatedly, that TLH and BTB may already have been offered and declined this less than amazing opportunity, which is why they are not on the list. If so, good for them. Everyone else should decline as well—whatever the intentions of the creators of this “award” were, the fact is that the so-called awards are structured in such a way that your blogs are being used to promote the “sponsor” sites in the search engines. I hate when people abuse bloggers like this. Don’t fall for it.]
I’m waiting for a Bloggie, personally
I received an award from “Awarding the Web.”
I will post more when I can stop laughing.
It may be a while.
Sea Change
It is amazing what a weekend of MASH can do. Well, a weekend of MASH and a dozen other changes in circumstances, both major and minor.
My patience came skulking back Sunday evening, accompanied by my sanity.
I feel like I can breathe again.
Expect the blog to be quiet for a week or two. The horses I am helping with switched barns and there won’t be much to report while everyone is settling into a new routine.
My head may have exploded
This is how my week began: I was determined to accomplish two things at work on Monday. It’s Friday. They are still undone.
Tuesday, my head exploded. Wednesday morning, I went looking for the pieces, hoping to pull myself back together. The pieces were not in the freezer. Also not in the freezer: the bin for the automatic ice cube maker. I found that out when I opened the freezer door and non-contained ice came pouring out.
By Thursday, I was only pretending to have patience, since my actual patience had clearly run away. The police apparently do not take Missing Patience reports and are not willing to help me look for it.
And today—today on the way home from work I bought some food that is emphatically not allowed anymore. You may want to spare some kind thoughts from my neighbors. I can hear their TV, so I assume they can hear mine, and I intend to watch hours and hours and hours of MASH tonight. I hope they like the theme song.
I hope this marathon will help me regain my humanity. I’m sure my neighbors hope so too, even if they don’t know it yet.
I wonder if I put the ice cube bin back in the freezer. With the way this week has gone, that’s not a given…
P & P
Today’s lesson: a taste of piaffe and passage.
And by “a taste,” I mean “two or three steps at a time.” Of passage. The horse took my application for piaffe, considered it, and rejected it.
Which is all fine. The moments where he considered piaffe, and the few steps of passage that we got, were awesome.
Also awesome: the collected trot going into the piaffe and passage attempts, and the trot coming out, which was big, bold, beautiful.
Now to make sure I am doing lots and lots of my super secret ab-killer crunches at the gym, because I have found a whole new reason to find out whether I even have ab muscles improve my marshmallow belly develop a core.