2004.01.11
Changes in Web Site Rankings
My colleague Prof. Gianakoudakis performed an interesting comparative study. He compared the quality of the web sites of all Greek ministries (government departments for our US readers) in terms of the currency of their material, communication, usability, and the underlying technology. An interesting element of the study is the relative change of the ranking of each web site from 2002 to 2003, as can be seen in the following table:
| Rank 2002 | Rank 2003 |
|---|---|
| 12 | 1 |
| 19 | 2 |
| 16 | 3 |
| 14 | 4 |
| 20 | 5 |
| 11 | 6 |
| 9 | 7 |
| 13 | 8 |
| 21 | 9 |
| 18 | 10 |
| 8 | 11 |
| 3 | 12 |
| 5 | 13 |
| 10 | 14 |
| 6 | 15 |
| 1 | 16 |
| 17 | 17 |
| 15 | 18 |
| 2 | 19 |
| 7 | 20 |
| 4 | 21 |
I decided to plot the rank changes as a graph to confirm my suspicion.
Web site maintenance is typically neglected. Once a site's organisation, content, and usability have deteriorated to the point of no return, a big bang initiative rebuilds the web site from scratch.The graph indeed illustrated my point. Sites ranked near the bottom in 2002 scored top points in 2003; top-ranked sites in 2002 invariably moved to the bottom in 2003.
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