In 2011 Perfect Duluth Day chose as its official slogan “Duluth’s Duluthiest Website.” It was a statement we felt pretty confident making. Maybe other Duluth websites are better, but certainly none are Duluthier.

But this week we’ve been wondering if PDD truly is Duluth’s best website. This line of thinking was prompted by the Duluth Reader weekly newspaper conducting a poll and ultimately publishing in its Jan. 31 “Best of the Northland” issue that PDD won the title of “Best Local Website.”

Obviously winning such a poll doesn’t necessarily mean PDD is actually Duluth’s best website, it merely means PDD is what most people participating in the poll thought of when they filled out the ballot. And of course it could never really be proven that any local website is definitively the best. But, we’ll graciously accept the honor anyway.

Thanks to everyone who voted for PDD. We’ll keep striving to be the best, whether we’re really the best or not. Between our core crew of a dozen people working for peanuts and the various others who contribute for no pay whatsoever, a lot of work goes into keeping the PDD media empire strong. So it means a lot that you like us. Thank you.

To our knowledge this is the first time we’ve won such a poll since the now-defunct Duluth-Superior Magazine awarded Perfect Duluth Day “Best Website” and “Best Blog” in its April 2013 issue. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve been losing best-website polls in the years in between, however. We might have, but we really don’t know.

Thumbing through a few of the Reader‘s previous “Best of the Northland” issues revealed the category of “Best Local Website” might not have existed until this year.

The Duluth News Tribune has a similar annual poll called “Best of the Best,” but the 2018 and 2017 issues do not have a category for best website, suggesting no such award may have ever been issued by the local daily.

Duluth-Superior Magazine was in business from 2008 to 2013, and had awards issues going back at least to 2010, but we don’t know if there was a best website award in the magazine prior to 2013.

So, we don’t mean to suggest PDD is undefeated … we just have no memory of any other Duluth website winning this kind of award. Feel free to enlighten us in the comments regarding what we might have missed.

And what is Duluth’s second-best website?