EVALUATION OF AHVAZ JUNDISHAPUR UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES RANKING IN IRAN, MIDDLE EAST AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES IN 2016, A WEBOMETRICS ANALYSIS

University websites are of great importance to show the scientific activities of academic institutions. Qualitative and quantitative promotion of these websites, enhances the chance of recovery and visibility of medical universities in the cyber world. Ranking of Webometrics represents the degree of annual scientific activities appeared in universities website. In this study, four indicators including Size, Visibility, Richfiles and Google scholars indexing as the main indicators of Webometrics were analyzed in the Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Scinces website. Moreover, it was evaluated in comparison with websites of other top medical universities in Iran, middle east and Iran neighboring countries. The results showed that in terms of Webometrics ranking, Lomonosov Moscow State University of Russia, King of Saudi Arabia, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, and Shahid Beheshti of Tehran were ranked first to fifth respectively. Evaluation of Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences based on the indicators showed that this site has not been successful in most of these indicators. The information provided on the web pages was not attractive at the international level. Moreover, weakness of the site in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), English language of the content as well as few number of English web pages and backlinks for the university website were identified. Keywords: Webometrics, Ranking of websites, Search engines, University visibility, Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences