Small Dead Animals	53.82 % (3255)
Total votes: 6048

The Weblog Awards, sponsored by Wizbang in the US are a very big deal to some people. Big enough that in their fourth year (with an actual award ceremony in Los Vegas) there were about 5 hundred thousand votes cast this year.

So why am I laughing?
Because of the results above.
The Canadian blogosphere is so much richer than awards, and while no one would begrudge Small Dead Animals their day, you’d think Canucks were all politics all the time just looking at who the committee chose from nominations. It says more about how American blog readers/judges see Canada than it ever can about the wealth of and quality in Canadian blogs.

I’m laughing because I’m glad to see only 6 thousand votes were cast in the Canadian section. Voting was held over 8 days and you could vote once a day. So, if Small Dead Animals had 800 readers who all loyally voted once a day over 8 days, they’ve nailed the award. It isn’t about quality. And when people understand that, it’s funny and just fun.

Most countries don’t have blog awards, or if they do, don’t put the weight and importance on them the Weblogs attempt. It’s interesting in the results below, the top four are community efforts.

‘Hits’ is not a reliable measurement of how blogs and blog readers work, although I think most bloggers would admit a spike in hits can be a thrill.
Hits are a commercial standard of measurement online, but not a realistic standard of measurement for what’s good about a blog. Traffic is a small standard of what makes a blog what it is, traffic doesn’t say much about how popular it really is with  readers, nor are hits a quantifier of why most bloggers do what they do.

There were nearly 9 thousand votes cast for the best UK blog, 5700 for best European Blog, 87 hundred for best Australian and New Zealand blog and just over 15 thousand for best Asian blog.  There are millions of Asian blogs, btw.

I can commend WizBang for attempting to be inclusive toward the larger blogosphere, but the reality is, US bloggers continue to be busy focusing on their own, as you can see by the Best Blog Category and 27 other categories. At least this year this effort wasn’t plagued by the now legendary cheating. 

Daily Kos	36.87 % (21006)
Total votes: 56978