A webometric analysis of private university websites in Bangladesh

Abstract

There have been many research studies conducted on webometrics, especially on the impact of websites and the web impact factor. This current research analyzes the private university websites in Bangladesh according to some common webometrics indicators. It examines and explores 54 private university websites in Bangladesh and identifies the number of web pages and link pages, and calculates their Simple Web Impact Factor, Self-link Web Impact Factor and External link Web Impact Factor. The results indicate that some private universities have relatively high number of web pages, but correspondingly their link pages are low in number and the websites fall behind in their simple, self-link and external link web impact factors. It is also found that the external link web pages provide more than other link pages. Based on these findings, it is clear that the private universities in Bangladesh do not have much visibility on the web. In a cross sectional study, the websites are analyzed and compared using Google and Blekko search engines and tested by histogram, scatter plot and the line of best fit for reliability and then by regression analysis. The search results obtained are also compared using related ttest. This research also used SocSciBot personal web crawler to generate link data to develop micro-link topology. The result shows that the private universities in Bangladesh are not wellconnected in the topology framework. Finally, the major reasons for webometric ranking are discussed and the suggestions for improving the ranking of universities are presented.