UNILAG ranked among top 20 in Africa this University Web Ranking is not academic says 4icu.org website

The University of Lagos has taken the 16th position on the African continent in the recent ranking of top 100 Universities and Colleges in Africa by the 4icu.org University Web Ranking. UNILAG came behind University of Nairobi and University of Ghana both of which took the 14th and 15th position respectively.

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The first six universities in Africa in terms of webometric presence, according to the body, are in South Africa. They are University of Cape Town, Universiteit Stellenbosch, University of Pretoria, University of the Witwatersrand, University of KwaZulu-Nala and University of South Africa respectively.

Other Nigerian Universities among the top 100 in Africa are the University of Ilorin (39), University of Ibadan (40), Obafemi Awolowo University (42), University of Benin (45), University of Port Harcourt (52), University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (64), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (84) and University of Jos (88).

While 20 universities in South Africa made the list of top 100 in Africa, Nigeria had a good show in the ranking with nine federal universities listed among the top 100.

4 International Colleges & Universities is an international higher education search engine and directory reviewing accredited universities and colleges in the world. 4icu.org includes 11,000 colleges and universities, ranked by web popularity, in 200 countries.

The aim of the website is to provide an approximate popularity ranking of world universities and colleges based upon the popularity of their websites. This is intended to help international students and academic staff to understand how popular a specific university/college is in a foreign country.

The 4icu.org University Web Ranking is not an academic ranking and it advises the public not to adopt it as the main criterion for selecting a higher education organisation where to study.

It said, ''we do not claim – by any means – to rank organisations or their programmes, by the quality of education or level of services provided.''

According to 4icu.org, this ranking is based on web popularity. The current ranking is based upon an algorithm including three unbiased and independent web metrics extracted from three different search engines. They are Google Page Rank, Alexan Traffic Rank and Majestic Seo Referring Domains.

It said Web metrics data are collected on the same day to minimise temporal fluctuations and maximise comparability. ''A pre-computational filter is adopted to detect outliers in the raw data. Further investigation and a review of Alexa Traffic Rank data is carried out for universities adopting a subdomain (highly not recommended) as their official institutional home page.

“Once filtered (outliers) and reviewed (subdomains), web metrics data are normalised to a scale of 0 to 100 taking into consideration the logarithmic nature in which both the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Traffic Rank are expressed. The three normalised values are aggregated based on a weighted average algorithm which generates the final score and web ranking.''

Data and information are added or updated on a monthly basis.

The 4icu.org University Web Ranking is updated every six months, in January and July. It also rates accredited/recognised higher education organisations only.