Back in the 1990’s, when the Web just got popular, it seemed like every more or less large web site had to have a bunch of awards. Awards were the first web promotion tricks that I’ve learned of. Anyone could establish his own award. All you needed was a little image that looked like a medal or a star.
Awards were demanded by the “big guys” who wanted to show how “special” they were. And they were often taken advantage of by really small guys, who were making the awards, and used them to promote their own “award giving” web sites.
Then there were so many web awards that nobody cared about them anymore. And it was quite for some time.
The new wave started with trust certifications. Lots and lots of people on the web were followed by all sorts of scammers, spammers, crackers, hackers, and what not. Many got worried and afraid. So, the certification boom started. Trust of that, protection of this, guarantee of something, warranty of something else, etc.
Surprisingly, after all these years, so many web sites still use this non-sense. What is even more surprsing is that so many of them are prepared to pay money (and huge money in some cases) to get the award or certification. Why? That’s really beyond me.