MANILA, Philippines—The country’s only national university is now also its most popular—in cyberspace.
The University of the Philippines website was the most searched among those of tertiary education institutions in the country, according to a Sydney-based academic search engine.
The website of UP’s flagship campus in Diliman, Quezon City, ranked number one in the country in 4 International Colleges and Universities (4ICU), an international higher education search engine and directory.
4ICU released this week its web ranking of 11,000 university and college websites in 200 countries, posted on https://www.4icu.org/ph.
The Philippine list was made up of the 200 most searched local university and college websites, with UP Diliman (https://www.upd.edup.ph) coming in first.
Each institution in the ranking was accompanied by a page describing the school and a profile on course offerings, tuition, etc., to help foreign students in their decision-making.
UP was designated the only national university after the UP Charter was passed in 2008.
Coming in second after UP Diliman was De La Salle University in Manila.
The list treated the different UP campuses as separate institutions as each campus has its own website.
Likewise for the other campuses of De La Salle and Ateneo de Manila University.
Other institutions that landed in the Philippine top 10 were: The Quezon City-based UP System, which encompasses seven constituent universities and autonomous units; Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City; University of Sto. Tomas in Manila; UP Los Baños in Laguna; Aquinas University of Legazpi; Mindanao State University’s Iligan Institute of Technology; Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro City and University of San Carlos in Cebu.
As of August 2010, there were 2,180 higher education institutions in the Philippines accredited by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd).
Figures posted on the CHEd website showed that of this number, 607 were public institutions, including state colleges and universities like UP, while 1,573 were privately owned.
The 200 most popular Philippine colleges and universities in the 4ICU ranking constituted less than one percent of CHEd-accredited institutions as of 2010.
According to the 4ICU website, the ranking is computed using an algorithm that includes “unbiased and independent web metrics” from three search engines—Google Page Rank, Alexa Traffic Rank and Majestic Seo Referring Domains.
The algorithm formula was not disclosed for copyright reasons and to prevent any attempts to manipulate the rankings, the website said.
No Philippine school made it to the online popularity ranking of the top 200 universities and colleges in the world, as well as the top 100 institutions in Asia.