About us
Overview
uniRank™ (formerly 4 International Colleges & Universities) is the leading international higher education directory and search engine featuring reviews and rankings of over 13,600 officially recognized Universities and Colleges in 200 countries.
Higher Education Institutions
What we include
uniRank™ currently includes worldwide higher education institutions which satisfy the following requirements:
- are officially recognized, licensed and/or accredited by national or regional bodies such as Ministries of Higher Education or government recognized accrediting organizations.
- are officialy licensed or authorised to grant at least four-year undergraduate degrees (Bachelor's Degrees) and/or postgraduate degrees (Master's and Doctoral Degrees).
- provide higher education courses mainly in a traditional face-to-face learning format delivered through on-site facilities.
What we do not include
uniRank™ currently does not include:
- two-year degree granting institutions such as community colleges, vocational colleges, training colleges etc.
- distance learning institutions.
- seminaries and other theological higher-education institutions
- military or law enforcement higher-education institutions
- any other higher education institution that does not satisfy the above inclusion criteria and requirements.
University Ranking Methodology
Universities are ranked by our exclusive uniRank University Ranking™ which is listed as global university ranking by the IREG Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence.
Our web-based, non-academic University ranking has been published since May 2005. Since its inception, the ranking methodology has been periodically fine-tuned in order to provide better results.
University Ranking components and algorithm
The current uniRank University Ranking™ is based upon an algorithm including 5 unbiased and independent web metrics extracted from 4 different web intelligence sources:
- Moz Domain Authority
- Alexa Global Rank
- SimilarWeb Global Rank
- Majestic Referring Domains
- Majestic Trust Flow
The SimilarWeb Global Rank has been introduced in January 2017 to verify, complement and enhance the data offered by the Alexa Global Rank.
In January 2017 we have also reversed from the Majestic total count of referring subnets to the Majestic number of referring domains which satisfy a minimum threshold of Majestic Trust Flow. This newly introduced filtering process of the Majestic referring domains based on their Trust Flow provides a better understanding of the number of quality referring domains each University root domain has; it also overcomes situations where the number of referring links and referring domains are artificially inflated and manipulated through unnatural or paid links schemes, which are strongly discouraged and a violation of our and Google's guidelines.
University Ranking process
Web metrics data are collected on the same week to minimize temporal fluctuations and maximize comparibility. A pre-computational filter is adopted to detect outliers in the raw data. Further investigation and a review of both the Alexa Global Rank and SimilarWeb Global Rank data is carried out for universities adopting a subdomain (highly not recommended) as their official institutional home page.
Once outliers are detected and subdomains data reviewed and adjusted, web metrics data are normalised to a scale of 0 to 100 taking into consideration the logarithmic nature in which the Moz Domain Authority, the Alexa Global Rank and the SimilarWeb Global Rank are expressed. The normalised values are aggregated based on a weighted average algorithm which generates the final score and web ranking.
University Ranking algorithm disclosure
The exact formula adopted to aggregate the 5 web metrics is not disclosed for copyright reasons and to minimise attempts of manipulation from University webmasters in order to achieve a better rank. The same philosophy is adopted by Google with regards to their search engine ranking algorithm. Being the uniRank University Ranking™ a web-based non-academic University ranking, the need for ranking methodology transparency and the ability of testing and reproducing the results, as suggested by the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions, is less stringent than for academic University rankings.
Unranked Universities
Some higher education institutions are not ranked and listed at the bottom of each country listing for one of the following reasons:
- the University does not have an official website.
- the University's official domain has not been reachable for an extended period of time at the time of the ranking process.
- the University adopts an internal url as its official institutional website (ex. University of Oulu at http://www.oulu.fi/yliopisto/). The adoption of URLs as opposed to root domains or subdomains is highly not recommended.
- the University's official website is hosted by wordpress.com, blogspot.com or other global free hosting services (ex. unitaldili.wordpress.com)
University Ranking aim
The aim of the uniRank University Ranking™ is to provide an approximate global ranking of world Universities and Colleges based upon their web presence and popularity in terms of estimated traffic, trust/authority and quality link popularity. This is especially intended to help international students and academic staff to understand how popular a specific higher education institution is in a foreign country.
We do not claim - by any means - to rank higher education organisations or their programs, by the quality of education or level of academic services provided. The uniRank University Ranking™ is not an academic ranking and, therefore, should not be adopted as the main criteria for selecting a higher education organization where to enroll and study.
How to publish your University rank
To add your uniRank University Rank™ in your institutional website you can find some embed html code when clicking on the share link under your University Rank. By doing so your rank will be automatically updated once we publish the new university rankings twice a year, in January and July.
Social Media University rankings
Since 2018 we publish two new university rankings aimed at appraising the social media presence and popularity of higher education institutions in the two main socila platforms:
Geographical classification
uniRank™ adopts the United Nations geographical classification as shown in the webpage "Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions" published by the United Nations Statistics Division. For this reason countries like Turkey and Cyprus are included in the Asian geographical area even if, under a political point of view, they might better fit under the European one.
University Information Updates
Data and information are added or updated on a monthly basis. The uniRank University Ranking™ is updated and published twice a year, in January and July. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter to receive notifications on when the new University rankings are published.
All University and College profiles are included and updated at no cost. A special thanks goes to all Universities and Colleges that are participating in this project and help us maintain our database up-to-date.
How to add a University
To submit a missing accredited higher education institution which satisfies the criteria and requirements explained above, please find the appropriate country listing in the directory and click on at the bottom right of the University list. Please read the uniRank™ selection criteria above (What we include section) before submitting a missing University.
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Contact us
Click here to contact us. Please note that we are not able to provide guidance counseling or recommendations on Universities.
Alternatively you can mail us at:
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