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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 2002Rank 2003
121
192
163
144
205
116
97
138
219
1810
811
312
513
1014
615
116
1717
1518
219
720
421

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.

Changes in web site rankings 2002-2003

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Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material on this page created by Diomidis Spinellis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Greece License.