Websites of Top-Ranked Indian Higher Education Institutions: A Webometric Analysis

This paper explores a webometric study of the top25 institutions in India as ranked by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), a nodal ranking agency of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India. Efforts were made to establish a sort of ranking among these institutions’ websites by applying various webometric indicators, the important ones being web impact factor, WISER index, Alexa traffic rank, search engine optimisation, the security rank of website, the number of social media followers, and external backlinks. Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, ranked first regarding web impact factor (WIF) (8.678343949), whereas Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee ranked first regarding search engine optimisation. Eleven institutions\u27 (44 percent) websites had very strong security ranks. Anna University, Chennai, ranked first in Alexa traffic rank, with a loading time of 0.693 seconds, and was followed by the University of Delhi, Delhi, and Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. University of Delhi, Delhi, ranked first in the WISER index, with a value of 23.8984, and was followed by Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, and Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi