Content and technical evaluation of Type III Iranian medical universitie's websites

Besides the role that universities websites have in reflection of universities’ educational and research activities, they have also significant importance in promotion of universities’ national and international ranking in webometrics ranking of world universities and also in webometric ranking of Islamic world Science Citation and subsequently obtaining national and international credibility and gaining student and funding. So, continuous evaluation of universities websites in different aspects, especially based on considering index of these ranking systems, is important. Therefore, present study aimed to review the situation of Type 3 Iranian medical universities’ websites based on content and technical features effecting on promotion of webometric rank.
Present study is a survey with descriptive approach which descriptive the present situation of Type 3 Iranian medical universities’ websites. Data were collected using a researcher-made checklist which was consisted of two parts including content criteria effecting on webometric ranking (50 criteria) and technical criteria of search engines optimization (52 criteria). Content evaluation of websites was done by researcher direct referring and observing. In order to evaluation of these websites, based on technical criteria of search engines optimization, automatic tools about website evaluation were used. Data were analyzed by SPSS20.
The finding of this study showed that, Gonabad, Bushehr & Shahrekord universities of medical sciences have the most accommodation with the research checklist. Bam, Dezful & Jiroft universities of medical sciences have the least accommodation. According to research findings less than 50 percent of the research community, reached more than 50 percent of the criteria in checklist.
Evaluation of studied websites indicated that whole websites are far from ideal situation. So type 3 medical universities besides pay more attention to produce of rich and update information content also they must notice to technical criteria of search engines optimization in designing of their websites and by removing the technical access problems, try to eliminate the barriers of visibility.