It appears that blog award season is upon us, at least according to one website which has no interest in genealogy yet insists on handing out awards to what it feels are “top genealogy blogs.” We have no doubt that many of the recipients do have great genealogy blogs yet we caution anyone who has received an email about an award, to consider the source of the award.

You should use the same critical view toward any blog award as you would a source for your genealogy research: is the source legitimate? is the source the most representative one in its field? are there more reputable sources? would using such a source bolster or hinder the reputation of your research?

The recent award given by Online Colleges and Universities seemed legit to the point of actually creating an award badge and sending recipients the handy code to embed the badge via email.  In doing so, you were in essence placing a link to Online Colleges and Universities on your site so that they could try and improve their search ranking.

The site (for which, as you can see, I’ve decided not to create a link) is not involved in genealogy but as Louis Kessler of Behold Genealogy has pointed out so well, has created a series of “top blog” awards so that it can get “link juice” from the award recipient sites. If you’ve received an email from Online Colleges and Universities you may want to think twice about posting the award badge.

Awards from the genealogy industry and from within our own genealogy blogging community are made to recognize those who have produced superior content and not given in exchange for something such as a link exchange with another site.

©2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee