Webometric analysis and link relationship of computer science and information technology websites of Malaysia universities

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate 18 web domains of computer science and information technology academic websites of Malaysia universities.We collected more than two million web pages. A webometric analysis was used to explore the number of web pages, inbound links, the web impact factor (WIF) and link relationships. The results show Fakulti Teknologi dan Sains Maklumat (FTSM), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) has the highest number of webpages while Fakulti Teknologi Kreatif dan Warisan (FTKW), Universiti Malaysia Kelantan (UMK) has the largest WIF score. Pearson’s rank correlation coefficient was used to detect the relationship between institutions subdomain age and WIF. Correlations point out that there is scant relationship between subdomain age and WIF score across all 18 Malaysia selected schools [r =-.076, n = 18, p < .0005]. This is due to WIF are highly dependent on the quality of the content to attract backlinks and Google crawler algorithm that changes from time to time for the number of web pages. Subdomain age is independent to the year of establishment of the schools. These findings can be used as a guide to the implementation of university web content strategy.