In December 2006, SearchNetworking.com presented 1400 readers with a survey of more than 240 networking products and/or product families, divided into 12 categories. Respondents were asked to select the products in each category that they use and had the option of specifying products that did not appear on the list. (The categories and product lists were determined by SearchNetworking.com editors.) Respondents were asked to rate each product according in between six and eight criteria that varied according to product. Each criterion was assigned a weighted value based on its importance, so that more prominent features would have more impact on the final evaluation.

For each criterion, respondents scored the product on a scale of one (poor) to five (excellent). They also had the ability to indicate that they had "no opinion."

Winners were based on cumulative responses achieved by calculating each product's average weighed score. Editors arrived at this number by multiplying the number of points a product received in each area, multiplied by the weight of the criterion. This was totaled, then divided by the number of responses for that product, giving the average weighted score.

In each product category, the highest average weighted score received the gold medal, the next highest the silver, and the third highest bronze. Vendors were only eligible to win one award per category. If more than one of a single vendor's products received scores in the top three, that vendor was awarded the highest award and the product from a different vendor with the next highest score was awarded the following award.