Blog award

A Blog award is an award for the best blog in a given category. Some blog awards are based on a public vote and others are based on a fixed set of criteria applied by a panel of judges.

Various organizations have started blog awards with varying degrees of success. Some have become defunct.

Process

Like usual film or television awarding committees, blog awards are started by a certain body, usually composed of blog enthusiasts. Since blogging is an Internet activity, most of the process are done online.

Nominees are usually accepted from anyone in the Internet given the one who nominates adhere to given policies and procedures. The nominated websites, varying from independent servers to provider hosted are scanned by a selected team of judges.

The filtered nominees are then announced online or by other means such as newspaper or radio stations. Other bloggers or Internet users are given the opportunity to vote for several categories such as Best Single Post, Best Blog Site, Best Design, and others. The winners are announced in a ceremonial night usually held in large venues and online.

There are also blog awards initiated by small groups of bloggers in certain locations. The nomination and selection process is usually the same with major awarding bodies but the awarding is usually less extravagant.

Major awards

Among the major blog awards are The Weblog Awards (Bloggies) , and the BOBs (Best of Blogs). The bestower of the BOBs, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, describes their awards as "the world’s largest international blog competition". Awarded since 2004, the BOBs are selected by an "international jury of independent journalists, media experts and blog experts".

The The Weblog Awards (Wizbang), have been canceled for 2010.

Minor awards

In 2007, the Greek Blog Awards were determined by public vote. Awards were given to 12 blogs in different categories.

Some blog awards are specific to a particular topic such as The Photobloggies, others to a specific region like the Search Maryland Top Blog Awards.

There's also blog awards targeted to people of various nationalities. Indibloggies, started in 2003, is targeted at Indian Blogs. The Philippine Blog Awards is now on its third year (2009) which recognizes Filipino blogging talent around the world.

Another Philippine award honoring the best and inspiring Filipino Expatriates and Overseas Filipino Worker's blogs and bloggers around the world is the Pinoy Expats/OFW Blog Awards or PEBA

Another series of awards given to legal blogs are the Attorney.org Legal Blog Awards. The nominees are broken down into categories such as Environmental and Land Use Law Blogs, Criminal Law Blogs, Tax Law Blogs, and Divorce Law Blogs to name a few. They also choose the National Top 100 which is a compilation of the Top 100 blogs, regardless of category.

Defunct awards

The UK newspaper The Guardian ran a Best British Blog competition in 2002 and another in 2003, but then stopped because of limited enthusiasm from the UK blogging community and a few public boycotts.