The academic excellence of universities around the globe has always been a matter of extended study and so has the quality of an institution’s presence in the World Wide Web. The purpose of this research is to study the extent to which a university’s academic excellence is related to the quality of its web presence. In order to achieve this, a method was devised that quantified the website quality and search engine optimization (SEO) performance of the university websites of the top 100 universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) Shanghai list. A variety of tools was employed to measure and test each website and produced a Web quality ranking, an SEO performance ranking, as well as a combined overall web ranking for each one. Comparing these rankings with the ARWU shows that academic excellence is moderately correlated with website quality, but SEO performance is not. Moreover, the overall web ranking also shows a moderate correlation with ARWU which seems to be positively influenced by website quality and negatively by SEO performance. Conclusively, the results of the research indicate that universities place particular emphasis on issues concerning website quality, while the utilization of SEO does not appear to be of equal importance, indicating possible room for improvement in this area.

The English language is the most dominant language in the Western world and its influence can be noticed in every aspect of human communication. It’s increasing diffusion, especially since the turn of the century, is hard to measure with conventional means. The present research studies the use of language in websites of European Union (EU) member states, in order to collect data about the prevalence of the English language in the different countries and regions of the European Union. To achieve a realistic representation of today’s landscape of the European Web, this study uses a vast population of websites and a representative sampling size and methodology. By analyzing and processing the findings from over 100,000 websites from every country in the EU, a solid foundation is set that is used to explore the dominance of the English language in the European World Wide Web in general. This is the first study that examines the presence of English content in the websites of all EU member countries and provides statistical evidence regarding the ratio of English content availability for each country. Conclusively, the results of the research demonstrate that the English language is available on more than one quarter of all websites of non-English speaking EU member states. Moreover, it is available in the vast majority of multilingual and bilingual websites, while at the same time being the only language that is available in a number of monolingual websites. In addition, it is shown preference over the national language in a significant number of cases. A moderate negative correlation is found between a member state’s population and the availability of English in these countries’ websites and the same holds true for a member state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Both these correlations indicate that smaller countries tend to provide more content in English in order to establish a stronger presence in the international environment. Taking into account the role of language in the expression of national identity, this study provides data and insights which may contribute to the discussion about the changes underway in the national identity of EU member states.

Content and metadata concerning a specialized field such as Art and Cultural Heritage are often scattered throughout the World Wide Web, making it hard for end-users to find, especially amid the vast and often commercialized general content of the Web. This paper presents the process of designing and developing a Federated Search Engine (FSE) that collects such content from multiple credible sources of the world of Art and Culture and presents it to the user in a unified user-oriented manner, enhancing it with added functionality. The study focuses on the challenges such an endeavor presents and the technological tools, design decisions and methodology that lead to a fully functional, Web-based platform. This implemented search engine was evaluated by a group of stakeholders from the wider fields of art, culture and media during a closed test and the insights and feedback gained by these tests are herein analyzed and presented. These insights contain both the quantitative metrics of user engagement during the testing period and the qualitative information presented by the stakeholders through interviews. The above findings are thoroughly discussed and lead to conclusions regarding the usefulness and viability of Web applications in the aggregation and diffusion of Art and Cultural Heritage related content.

This paper presents the digital tools, online platform and methodology created during the implementation of BYZART, a European co-funded project for the enrichment of Europeana collections with heritage objects for Byzantine art and archaeology provided by the partners of the project. The creation of the platform and its usability are thoroughly described as well as the importance of such tools for the preservation and promotion of world cultural heritage. Also, the paper discusses the adaptation of the methodology to other projects, for the engagement of communities in the field of heritage datafication, and we demonstrate how existing content can be re-used by “meta-creators” to develop new content, applications and presentation paradigms.

Since the dawn of the new millennium and even earlier, a coordinated effort has been underway to expand the World Wide Web into a machine-readable web of data known as the Semantic Web. The field of art and culture has been one of the most eager to integrate with the Semantic Web, since metadata, data structures, linked-data, e.g., the Getty vocabularies project and the Europeana LOD initiative—and other building blocks of this web of data are considered essential in cataloging and disseminating art and culture-related content. However, art is a constantly evolving entity and as such it is the subject of a vast number of online media outlets and journalist blogs and websites. During the course of the present study the researchers collected information about how integrated the media outlets that diffuse art and culture-related content and news are to the Semantic Web. The study uses quantitative metrics to evaluate a website’s adherence to Semantic Web standards and it proceeds to draw conclusions regarding how that integration affects their popularity in the modern competitive landscape of the Web.

With the constant expansion of the Web, search engines became part of people’s daily routines. How users behave during the search process depends on a variety factors, one of which is the topic of their search interest. This study focused on the behavior of users searching the Web for content related to art and cultural heritage. A proprietary, publicly available, federated search engine, in the form of a web and mobile app, was developed for this research’s purposes. This platform was used to monitor actual user behavior during a six-month period. Quantitative data related to the platform’s usage were collected and analyzed in order to provide a detailed picture of the way interested parties engaged with it. This information pertained not only to the search queries and results viewed, but also to the various characteristics of the search sessions themselves. The study presented an analysis of these data, with emphasis on query and result characteristics, usage devices, login preferences and session duration, and drew conclusions. The study’s findings showed, among other things, that art searchers showed a preference for shorter queries, a tendency for higher query repeatability, and showed interest in a wider number of results than general purpose searchers. Additionally, they were more keen to use desktop devices instead of mobile ones and displayed higher engagement metrics during longer search sessions or when logged in. These findings outlined an art searcher who was interested in concepts and people often revisited searches and results, showed interest for more than the first few hits, was attracted by rich content, and understood the art search process as a task which requires focus. They also pointed out a duality in the art search process itself which can be long and involved or short and purposeful.