"Cybermetrics Lab", which is a research group that belongs to Spanish research body "Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)", has announced the July 2012 edition of "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities" at the end of July 2012. Among approximately 20.000 world universities that were evaluated and ranked, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Stanford University ranked the top three universities of the world.
In this ranking, Middle East Technical University has ranked 275th and maintained its first position amongst the Turkish universities. By ascending to 275th place at July 2012, METU, which formerly ranked 342nd at the preceding January 2012 edition of the Webometrics Ranking, achieved great success.
According to the ranking in July 2012, in addition to Middle East Technical University, İstanbul Technical University (ITU) from Turkey has also been included in the top 500 universities list, by taking the 499th place in the ranking.
Amongst the Turkish universities between the first 500 and 1000, Gazi University ranked 501st, Ankara University ranked 548th, Ege University ranked 562nd, Bilkent University ranked 611st, Boğaziçi University ranked 663rd, Hacettepe University ranked 677th, Anadolu University ranked 738th, İstanbul University ranked 839th, İnönü University ranked 865th, Sabancı University ranked 928th, Çukurova University ranked 966th, and 9 Eylül University ranked 994th. (The Webometrics ranking of all Turkish universities can be accessed via this link.)
The aim of Webometrics Ranking is to increase the web based journal output of universities and to encourage them to use the web efficiently. Therefore, rather than assessing the academic success of universities, the interest of potential students in universities and the quality of journals written by the scholars, Webometrics focuses on universities’ publicity on the web and efficiency of their web use.
