NEWS ARCHIVE

February 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)

Two 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 (SES) (20%): 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 (80%): 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

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 The cumulative
score (the sum of the results from the two search engines) is then used to rank each subdomain
Also, an automated tool is used to calculate the number of backlinks a particular subdomain has
acquired over time

Download the Rankings in PDF Format Here