OEDb's Online College Rankings 2009: Ranking by Peer Web Citations

The peer Web citations metric could be considered a proxy for a college's relative status among other colleges. Using Yahoo! Search's linkdomain:example.edu site:.edu -site:example.edu backlink command (where example.edu is the college's domain name), we can find out how many times a particular college's Web site is linked to by other college's Web sites. The site:.edu portion of the search operator weeds out backlinks from non-academic Web sites. The -site:example.edu portion of the search operator weeds out any internal linking from the college's own Web site. All searches were conducted on December 4, 2008. We used Yahoo! Site Explorer rather than Google because Google returns only a random sample with its link: operator.

RankCollegePeer Web Citations
1Nova Southeastern University4,950
2Walden University 2,850
3Franklin University1,920
4Regent University1,070
5Granite State College1,040
6University of Phoenix993
7National University827
8Devry University714
9National American University629
10Liberty University567
11Capella University564
12Champlain College521
13Western Governors University467
14Kaplan University410
15Upper Iowa University398
16Bellevue University356
17Tiffin University349
18LeTourneau University296
19Dickinson State University287
20City University256
21American InterContinental University253
22Grand Canyon University252
23ITT Technical Institute239
24Everest University215
25Baker College211
26Jones International University180
27Fisher College164
28Rasmussen College137
29Darton College136
30Northcentral University114
31Colorado Technical University106
32Berkeley College96
33South University87
34Western International University86
35Peirce College85
36Ashford University76
36Westwood College76
38York Technical College72
39Herzing College48
40Salem International University41
41Keiser University38
42Post University32
43Florida National College15
44Everglades University3

Note: For some colleges, we searched for links to multiple domains:

  • American InterContinental University: aiuonline.edu and aiuniv.edu.
  • Capella University: capella.edu and capellauniversity.edu.
  • Colorado Technical University: coloradotech.edu and ctuonline.edu.
  • Dickinson State University: nodak.edu and dickinsonstate.edu.
  • Everest College: everest.edu, everestonline.edu, and everestcollege.edu.
  • Florida National College: florida-national.edu and fnc.edu.
  • Grand Canyon University: grand-canyon.edu and gcu.edu.
  • Herzing College: herzingonline.edu and herzing.edu.
  • ITT Technical Institute: itt-tech.edu and itttech.edu.
  • Jones International University: jonesinternational.edu, jiu.edu, and international.edu.
  • Kaplan University: kaplan.edu, kaplanuniversity.edu, and kucampus.edu.
  • Keiser University: keiseruniversity.edu and keisercareer.edu.
  • LeTourneau University: letu.edu and letourneau.edu.
  • Liberty University: libertyu.edu, liberty.edu, lbts.edu, and luonline.edu.
  • National American University: national.edu and nauonline.edu.
  • Rasmussen College: rasmussen.edu and rasmussenonline.edu.
  • University of Phoenix: phoenix.edu and uophx.edu.
  • Westwood College: westwood.edu and westwoodonline.edu.
  • York Technical College: yorktech.com and yorktech.edu.

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OEDb's Online College Rankings ranks 44 of the nation's top online colleges by eight different metrics. Please read more about this study or about our methodology for additional information.

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