UP is most searched Philippine university on Internet, says search engine

MANILA, Philippines — The country’s only national university is now most popular – in cyberspace.

The University of the Philippines’ website is the most searched tertiary education institution in the country, according to a Sydney-based academic search engine.

In particular, the website of its flagship campus in Diliman, Quezon City was ranked number one in the four International Colleges and Universities (4ICU), an international higher education search engine and directory.

The 4ICU released early this week its web ranking of the 11,000 universities and colleges websites in 200 countries, posted on https://www.4icu.org/ph.

The Philippine list was made up of the 200 most searched university and college websites, with UP Diliman (https://www.upd.edu.ph) emerging on top.

Each institution in the ranking was accompanied by a page describing the university or school and a profile on course offerings, tuition etc to help foreign students in their decision-making.

Coming in second after UP Diliman was the De La Salle University in Manila.

The list however treated the UP campuses as separate institutions, as each campus has its own website.

UP was designated as the only national university after the UP Charter was passed in 2008.

Likewise, the other campuses of the De La Salle University and the  Ateneo were also considered as different units with their own websites.

Other universities which landed in the top 10 were: the Quezon City-based UP System, which includes all seven campuses; Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City; University of Sto. Tomas in Manila; UP Los Banos in Laguna; Aquinas University of Legazpi;  Mindanao State University’s Iligan Institute of Technology; Xavier University in Cagayan de Oro and University of San Carlos in Cebu.

As of August 2010, there are 2,180 higher education institutions in the country accredited by the Commission on Higher Education.

Figures posted on the CHED website showed that of this number, 607 are public, including state colleges and universities like UP while 1,573 are privately owned.

The 200 most popular Philippine colleges and universities in the 4ICU ranking only constitute less than one percent of the CHED-accredited institutions as of 2010.

According to the 4ICU website, the current rankings are computed using an algorithm, including “unbiased and independent web metrics” from three search engines – the 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 at  manipulating the rankings, the website added.

No Philippine tertiary education institution made it to similar online popularity rankings of the top 200 universities and colleges in the world, as well as the top 100 institutions in Asia.

The 4ICU releases its rankings every January and July of each year and have been posted since May 2005, the website said.

Aside from worldwide and regional rankings, the search engine also computes rankings for the 200 countries in its database – all free of charge.

It however clarified that the list was not an academic ranking.

While the 4ICU University Web Ranking is intended to help foreign  students in understanding how popular a certain university is in its  country, “it should not be adopted as the main criteria.”

Its rankings do not include distance-learning organizations and institutions offering two-year degrees such as community colleges, vocational colleges and training colleges.