UK Software developer Andy Brice smelled something foul when he created a program and saw five star award graphics from a number of different software download sites for competitor products.

He did some digging and found most of the download sites that gave him five stars gave almost all of his competitors five star awards too. Brice further tested the theory by creating a completely worthless application that was a text file saying “this software does nothing at all, it doesn’t even run” and named it awardmestars. You can Google awardmestars and find different download sites where it’s offered including the one pictured above.

Next, he used an auto submitter program to submit his worthless program to 1033 different software download sites. As of his blog post and some submissions are still pending 7% of the download sites that accepted Awardmestars gave him an award:

The truth is that many download sites are just electronic dung heaps, using fake awards, dubious SEO and content misappropriated from PAD files in a pathetic attempt to make a few dollars from Google Adwords. Hopefully these bottom-feeders will be put out of business by the continually improving search engines, leaving only the better sites. I think there is still a role for good quality download sites. But there needs to be more emphasis on quality, classification, and additional content (e.g. reviews).

Since the site opened for business I don’t recall ever displaying an award on tdscripts.com. We do display a PayPal certified badge. Even when I first started out I carefully chose what sites to submit my scripts and I’m still very picky. When the popular site hotscripts opened for business they spidered all my scripts and listed them and then started sending me emails asking me to update the listings “you submitted.”

Like Mr. Brice I realize some of these software and script download sites are valid and provide honest reviews, but I’ve always questioned what seemed a clear conflict of interest with these awards buttons which often “must link back” to the awarding site. It’s not that I’m selfish about linking back to other sites, but if I earn an award it needs to be worth something. It can’t be something that anybody who submits something gets. That’s not an award, that’s a reciprocal link exchange.

It’s not just software where this happens. The blog here has received a few awards over the years, some of which I’ve acknowledged on the homepage others of which I haven’t after seeing how often the highest rating is awarded.

I decided to check my own backyard Hmm Reviews and see how many times an A+ grade has been awarded. Any guesses how many A+ grades have been given? I’ll give you a hint and keep in mind this includes a few paid reviews, the answer involves a zero.

From the list as of this writing there are 19 A- or better review grades and three F grades, one of which was a paid review. Perhaps Hmm Reviews should create badges for B- or better grades? Why award a badge to some site/product/service that is average or worse unless it’s purely done for link SEO reasons as mentioned above (something I wouldn’t be interested in doing)? Or maybe just create a badge for A and A+? Even more rare, even more valuable.

I welcome below your thoughts below on the pros and cons of creating a legitimate awards badge system.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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