I just saw the results of the blog vote. Does anyone know how this type of votes are being conducted and how fraud-safe they are? In fact, I voted twice through different computers.

I also was somewhat surprised that the scores while the vote was still ongoing did not reflect the final result. There was an Arabic English learning site (English village, I believe) which seemed ahead by a large margin but did not show up in the final ranking, strange.

And than there is another thought: The fact that our friend Luca is in second place shows me that there are not so many professional language blogs out there, that is, blogs that are basically run full time. I had a look at his post frequency: April 11th, May 17th and then May 28th. In order to attract many people I think you cannot avoid making it a full time job, post more, be active on other sites, comment a lot yourself, have a well maintained FB site, have a product, guest-post a lot, etc.

Wether you love or hate Benny, he definitely has the most professional blog, engages the most with his readers and has the best story, I'm afraid.

I also noted that some of these blogs are language specific, set up for only one specific language like Japanese or Dutch. Naturally this will also reduce the reach of the blog.

I am not sure, but I think that the final result is decided by the votes at 50%, the other 50% being based on the activity of the website/blog (frequency of the updates, activity in the forum, etc ...).

Well, Luca couldn't have scored high on update frequency. Difficult to say how the fina ranking came about.

Not sure, Friedemann.

I was a bit surprised to not see Steve anywhere on that list given his popularity and a little disappointed not to see mine (although it's understandable considering I haven't been around for very long).

I think it would have been helpful if they disclosed the number of votes for each nominee.

Mezzoguild,

I don't follow Steve's blog anymore but my impression is that nowadays he maybe puts less time into maintaining it, which is key, I think to attract readers. Steve seems to prefer Youtubing these days, but I might be wrong. So the fact that Steve didn't make it into the top 10 did not really surprise me.

As I just commented in the C1 megathread, I just watched some of Richard Simcotts videos. What a great guy! What an inspiration he is. I voted for his blog, but not because I thought he has the best blog but rather as a general vote for the man.