If you have a website, why have just one feather in your cap when you can have a hundred? Look around the web and there is a plethora of awards all waiting to be won. Flashily designed icons ranging from family honours to cool pet site prizes are there for the taking - for in most cases you just need to apply.

The list is almost endless... the Surreal Website award, Duke of URL Classy Site award, Bonnie and Rex's Radical award, the Zilinsky Family award, Cyber Teddy People's Choice top 500 award, Lisa/Lothy/Judy's creative site award.

Then there are those which cost - they redesign the web page for a fee, before you apply for their award. The Webby awards in the US, held last week in San Francisco, and the Yell UK awards - due in July - might have prestige, but they are only two in the sea of icons with which you can embellish your site. So can anyone give anyone an award in the cyber world? The answer is obviously yes. Why issue them? Because the more awards you hand out, the more web pages will link back to your own.

But surprisingly, there are a few website builders who have benefited from it all. Dr Vijay Prakash, a resident of Lucknow in north India, swears by the awards which have made him an instant net celebrity. His site Guide to Home Remedies and First Aid http://dr-vijayprakash.hypermart.net has won him no fewer than 80 awards within a year. Up to 40 emailed queries are sent to him from all over the world each day, ranging from people worrying about snakebites to those looking for long-term asthma cures. He answers them all free, sometimes issuing "dadima ke nuskhe" - ancient herbal remedies passed down generations.

The fame which the paediatrician could never earn even after practising for 14 years in his hometown is now his after just a few months on the web. "These awards help in getting publicity. Earlier I used to apply to go to international conferences, now I get invitations to attend the same," says Dr Prakash. "They also agree to pay for the air fare," he adds, laughing.

'Money is secondary - the response which I have got in the last few months is mindboggling. I also keep getting emails from expatriate Indians from all over the world who chance upon my site and are proud to see that I have bagged so many honours."

Although he was the site of the month on AOL last October, he says his biggest recognition is the link provided to his site by the prestigious Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. For someone like Phil Barnett, a Cheshire bird watcher and winner of 1999 Yell best personal site and site of the year awards for his Birds in a Cheshire Garden, his dual feat has not only made him famous overnight, but given him a career. "I had been suffering from ME and had been on a wheelchair for 10 years. Unable to do anything I used to keep watching birds in my garden," explains Barnett. "When my condition improved I bought myself a computer in 1997, got an internet connection and started designing web pages on my subject - birds.

"After getting the best personal site award I was shocked when my name was announced for the best site of the year award," says the self-taught web designer. He has now opened his own web designing agency with a small, but growing, nationwide clientele.

Barnett says that most web site awards are meaningless, but serve a purpose as another link in the web. "One has to separate the wheat from the chaff," he adds. "I know of people who have got a hundred awards for sites which are not the least good."

But the popularity of the big awards keeps growing. Nigel Marson, marketing communications controller at yell.com says nominations have increased by 25% this year. "There are new categories this year for small business, which also include nominations from people like plumbers and antique dealers," he says.

Insisting that it is not just hits but the merit of the sites which bags them the awards, he cautiously declines to comment on the thousands of other little known prizes. But for all those who get the honours just for asking, the prestige and origins of the award probably don't matter - they just want another icon to decorate their page.