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March Edition of FUTA Web Rankings Released!


Download the Rankings in PDF Format Here

In a bid to encourage the optimal use of web technologies as a means of bringing the University closer to achieving its vision, the Computer Resource Centre (CRC) has come up with a web ranking methodology with which the various units and departments of the University would be ranked based on their contribution to the visibility and relevance of the University on the World Wide Web (WWW).

Three indicators have been identified for use in ranking the various subsections of the University website. These indicators are Search Engine Saturation and Backlinks.

  • Search Engine Saturation: This refers to the number of times a particular subdomain has been indexed by search engines. The value of this indicator is affected by the amount of traffic that has been directed at the subdomain as well as the use of search engine optimization techniques (optimized keywords, page titles, etc.). A high Search Engine Saturation value gives a picture of how visible a website is to the outside world and consequently how relevant its content is. It also gives a picture of the amount of traffic a website has been able to attract in the past few weeks.
  • Backlinks: also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks or inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page. Basically, a backlink is any link received by a website from another website. A high backlink value is usually an indicator that a number of other websites have found the content of your own website useful and have decided to provide a link to it on their own website. Therefore, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page.
  • Rich Files: This refers to the number of files available on the website in the following formats: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Adobe PostScript (.ps & .eps), Microsoft Word (.doc & .docx) and Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt & .pptx).

In order to measure these identified indicators, the CRC has identified a number of automated tools that can calculate the number of times a section of the website has been indexed by Google and Microsoft Bing, the two major search engines in the world at the moment. Also, the CRC has been able to put up systems to automatically count the number of rich files, as well as the number of backlinks on each domain. The cumulative score from all these indicators is then used to rank each subdomain.

Download the Rankings in PDF Format Here