Okay, that was quite a few heavy posts there. Let’s do something fun now. Loren Baker has opened nominations for the 2006 Search Blogs Awards. Here’s the votes I threw in:
* Best Search Engine Corporate Blog (owned by the search engines)
Tough one. Google Reader Blog for me.* Best Contextual Advertising Blog
Gotta be Jensense.* Best Search Engine Community Blog
I’m going to go with SEOmoz for this year. The signal is high and lively compared to the noise.* Best Web 2.0 Blog
TechCrunch
But I found myself wishing for some other categories.
* Most interesting Whitehat blog:
Spamhuntress, narrowly edging out Eric Enge. Keep an eye on Eric, though. He’s got a fun idea for a series called This Old Web Site. Just like This Old House shows you how to remodel your home, Eric goes through a real-world example of a site that they remodeled and shows you everything they changed. The site was Videomaker.com, which is a real-world magazine, and Eric increased visitors by 67%. Good stuff.
* Most interesting Blackhat blog:
SEO Black hat. What the hell, I already linked to him once tonight. Fun to read, but following his advice could get all your sites burned to the ground.
* Most tireless chronicler of the search industry:
Barry over at Search Engine Roundtable. Heck, Barry could halve his blog posts and stay ahead of pretty much everyone except Gary Price.
* Thinks most like a Googler:
Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped. I wish I’d had the ideas for this click survey or this Internet chess moves visualization. Philipp, I’m tired of being mad about this post. I’m ready to talk about the bet now whenever you want.
* Best off-the-beaten-track Google news:
Google Operating System
* Best up-and-comer blog of the year:
Bruce Clay Blog. I know I know, it didn’t really start in 2006, but 2006 is the year it became a must-read. Lisa and Susan, get them to turn on comments over there, will ya? 
* Best blog covering the legal side of search:
Eric Goldman
* Blog most likely to provoke deep thoughts:
Greg Linden. How come we can’t get another 5-10 blogs like Greg’s?
* Biggest search story of the year:
China. Runner-up: Danny Sullivan leaves Search Engine Watch after 10 years.
* Blogger who gave me the most work combating hoax marketing:
Easily Graywolf. However, I create a special lifetime achievement award in this category for Threadwatch.
* Best search patent blog:
SEO by the SEA. This category will be summarily given to Bill Slawski for a five year term, barring a major shake-up.
* Best search blog for people who have real lives and don’t live and breathe search 24 hours a day:
John Battelle
* Best search radio show/podcast of the year:
The Daily SearchCast
* Best search video of the year:
(Okay, I did some. Did anyone else do search videos? If so, comment. Maybe more people will hop in this niche next year.)
* Dead blogs I miss the most:
Tie: Xooglers and Spam Kings. I’ll pour out a 40oz for you, homies.
* Favorite video games this year:
Tie: LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy. Games made for 10-year-olds are just about the right difficulty level for me. The other was online-game Kingdom of Loathing. If you wondering why I didn’t post as much in say, April or May, blame it on KoL.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve not come across many msdn blogs, but an excellent Microsoft Technology Development Blog is Somasegar’s Blog
seoptimization.blog.com/
Best ‘non connected’ Blog –
Not created by anyone involved in a network of ‘I scratch
your back, you scratch mine’
Every Topic is intended to be a Classic that defies time or News Buzz
Oh, Oh OH…. SearchEnginesWeb
Looks suspiciously like having 3 visitors and adding another one (Eric).
Hey Matt,
You can find some interesting SEO videos at http://www.toprankblog.com/. They covered SES Chicago and interviewed e.g. Stacy Williams (Atlanta Search Marketer), Laura Thieme (Biz Research), Bruce Clay (no introduction needed), Reprise Media, Stephan Spencer and Neil Patel & Cameron Olthius on video.
See also: http://video.google.nl/videosearch?q=www.toprankblog.com
Check it out.
Enjoy your weekend
Nice list and I’m glad to see the link to SEO Black Hat. It’s really a great blog even for those of us who obey all the rules. What do you think of SEObook? I tend to read Aaron Walls stuff more then SEOMoz. All this blog talk makes me want to update mine more then I already do (daily).
Nice list, I’m especially happy to see the links to Grey Wolf and SEO Black Hat. They are great reads even for the whitest white hate SEO.
[quote] Blogger who gave me the most work combating hoax marketing:
Easily Graywolf. However, I create a special lifetime achievement award in this category for Threadwatch.[/quote]
Ha ha ha… Shouldn’t TW get one for;
‘….that Baited me (Matt) the most during the course of the year’ ?
I am sure all would be proud to wear that title….
That’s what the lifetime achievement award is for, theGypsy.
Nice Post Matt…. I’ve always hoped that you would post the blogs you read.
perhaps you should do a shared thing like Scoble does… It’d be interesting to see what blogs you’re reading. You seem to keep up on a LOT of random blogs (I stumbeled across your comment on somebody’s cease and desist ranking above us for our term post)
anyway… those of you that own those blogs, need to make it easier for me to subscribe to your feeds. I only found 1 “add to google reader” button on the 6 or 7 that I decided to subscribe to. Me no likey copy and paste. You guys need a Feedbutton (www.feedbutton.com)…. or something.
I’d like to say it’s just an honor to be nominated …
Some folks might notice Matt got a lot of traffic as a result of my hoax marketing. Now I’d never suggest using a wingman to help you set up something like that on your own … nope … never suggest that …
Thanks for including me in the list Matt. Funny thing is that a friend of mine works in Marketing at ThisOldHouse – I will have to tell him he owes me a favor for getting hin a link out of your blog. :>
Whatever happened to xooglers? Is nobody leaving Google alive anymore (or is it a legal problem?)? Or did they all get re-hired at Google?
I love those old stories. How did you join up, Matt?
Eric, just tell him not to get on your case for calling it This Old Website.
I find it strange that so many people have been nominating jensense for an award. She’s written 1 post in 2 weeks and its taken her almost 2 months to write 10 posts.
I know content is king, but surely post frequency should count for something?
I second the nomination of Greg Linden’s blog. He’s got a lot of good stuff on there.
Rob, she along with Greg and Barry(?) was one of the people to notice the caching crawl proxy earlier this year. She did some really nice detective work on that..
Gotta agree with Rob. Nominating JenSense is too easy. She used to be unmissable (especially the posts at Webmasterworld – we all miss those) but now it’s just an occasional post on the blog, often just saying “I’m off to a conference – wow!”. The blog lists forthcoming speaking engagements which were six months ago and just looks, well, neglected. I’ve enjoyed listening to and reading Jen, and I can’t really suggest anyone much better, but things certainly ain’t what they used to be.
Thanks, Matt! Glad you enjoy my weblog!
Hi Matt. Been reading your blog since October; first time commenting. Your last comment about Kingdom of Loathing caught my eye; I’m a KOLer too. Addicted; I’m going on my third year now.
If you’re still playing, drop me a line sometime (kmail “Johnz the Grey”) and I’ll hook you up with some free buffs.
If you really want something for videos, then WebProNews needs mentioned. They’ve been investing a lot and doing some great interviews with people in the search industry.
Brian was not compensated or solicited in any way to post that.
…threatened perhaps, but only tacitly.
What about mattcutts blog?, I think it should be on top of the list as it is the most popular blog by google blogger.