A. PageRanks Received by HBCUs

The DLL is greatly encouraged by the PageRanks received by the Home Pages of most HBCUs.

• The Home Pages of most HBCU universities received PageRank = 7. This score was also received by the Home Pages of many well known majority institutions (Part II, Table B), e.g., the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Penn State, Villanova, and Washington & Lee. It is also the same score received by some very important governance agencies (Part III, Table C), e.g., the White House, the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and by many distinguished political/policy operations, e.g., the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Republican National Committee (RNC), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable.
  
  
• Three HBCU Home Pages -- Hampton University, Howard University, and Xavier University -- received PageRank = 8, an excellent score that was also received by the Home Pages of some of the nation's leading majority institutions (Part II, Table B), e.g., the University of Virginia (UVA), NYU, Notre Dame, and Georgia Tech. Moreover, the tables in Part III show that Home Pages of the Supreme Court, the CIA, the NAACP, the Wall Street Journal, HBO, Dell, and Symantec -- among many others -- also received PageRank = 8.
  
  
• The Home Pages of most HBCU four year colleges received PageRank = 6. As shown in Table B (Part II), this respectable score was also received by many of the highly profitable, rapidly expanding for-profit institutions, e.g., the University of Phoenix, Capella University, and DeVry University. In this context the PageRank = 7 received by seven four year colleges -- Coppin State, Miles, Morehouse, Morehouse School of Medicine, Paine, Spelman and Tougaloo -- should be regarded as outstanding.
  
  
• In light of the preceding results, the PageRank = 5 received by most of the HBCU two year colleges and technical institutes appears to be appropriate. Therefore the PageRank = 6 received by Bishop State, Shelton State, and Southern University (Shreveport) is outstanding.
  

B. Higher PageRanks

If most HBCUs are doing relatively well in these regards, how can they do even better? What can HBCUs do to receive higher PageRanks for their Web pages and thereby garner more attention to their past achievements and more potential support for their future programs? Google's own recommendations are straight-forward:

"In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages. For more information about improving your site's visibility in the Google search results, we recommend reviewing our Webmaster Guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html. They outline core concepts for maintaining a "Google-friendly" website." (Google Help Center)

These detailed guidelines are useful, but most HBCU Websites already incorporate most of their recommendations. One point, however, bears careful notice. The guidelines provide the following waning to Webmasters:

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."

In plain English, if a Webmaster tries to scam Google's ranking system, Google may decide to make that Website disappear from its listings!!! ... :-(

C. Attracting More Important Links

Google's primary recommendation -- that Webmasters should try to increase the number of links to their Websites from other important Websites -- derives from the fact that PageRanks are based on the importance of a Website's outside links as well as on the number of links a Website receives. Of course, an HBCU Webmaster cannot force other Webmasters to provide such links. However, other Webmasters might provide these links voluntarily if the HBCU Website contained information that was "useful" or "interesting".

This insight is so obvious that it would not seem to be worth noting ... except for the fact that every month while conducting its reviews of all HBCU Websites in search of announcements and events related to significant achievements in science and technology, the DLL has been puzzled to encounter sites that fail to post this kind of important information.

• Some HBCU Websites still do not have "press releases" or equivalent sections that provide straight-forward descriptions of the grants they have received, the conferences they are planning, significant publications by their faculty, etc. For example, the DLL has frequently encountered announcements of grants or contracts on the Websites of Federal sponsors, but could not find corresponding announcements on the Websites of the HBCU recipients.
  
  
• Some HBCU Websites do not update their press releases in a timely manner. They leave "old news" hanging out there for years. This makes a Web visitor wonder how much of the rest of the HBCU's Website is also obsolete.
  
  
• Some HBCU Websites do not have project pages (linked to their Home Page) that provide ongoing progress reports about significant projects. Initial announcements may be posted, but the projects subsequently disappear.

D. Final Words

Most HBCU Websites have clearly come a long way since the DLL published its last "Website Ratings" back in March 2003. While there is always room for improvement, the current high visibility of most HBCUs in cyberspace is very, very encouraging. ... :-)