University ranking the Google way

Eric | June 22, 2008

As I read today, Google has added website traffic statistics to Google Trends. I thought it may be interesting to compare the major Canadian universities

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As you can see both McGill and the University of Toronto clearly dominate the picture. Interestingly their traffic seems to follow the same pattern with a clear lack of interest in the early summer months and a peak in the fall (enrollment time?). Second is Vancouver’s UBC, followed by the University of Waterloo and Queen’s.

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The geographic distribution is surprisingly local, with virtually all hits being from within Canada. By looking at the cities you can easily see who’s located where. No surprises there.

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Top language is English of course but for McGill (blue) one can see a clear French tendency. Vive le Québec! 😉 Also of course the Chinese are everywhere, although I would have expected to be more at UBC than at Toronto.

It’s also interesting to note that we rank very well among some major universities in the world, during the last few years right behind Harvard.

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