The degree of visibility to search engines enjoyed by university digital libraries

Abstract

Introduction. With the rise of importance of information retrieval digital libraries become more and more sought after. University digital libraries serve as crucial information hubs for the public and researchers. With the abundance of information on the Internet findability of said information is key. A university digital library was investigated in order to find a lack of visibility towards search engines and possibilities of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve visibility. The goal of this research was to take a deeper look at website visibility of university digital libraries. Method. One open access university digital library (Cambridge Digital library) was identified and analysed by measurement of page rank with different key phrases. Additionally the page structure was analysed concerning SEO. Results and Analysis. The page ranks for different key phrases implied good website visibility for two selected documents. Page analysis showed already good SEO with room of improvement. Conclusions. It was concluded that findability through academic search engines still allows room of improvement and showed good website visibility in scope of this research.