Research networking systems (RNS) like Vivo, Profiles, and Pure are often sometimes undiscoverable by real users because of poor search engine optimization (SEO).

Last year, we released RNS SEO 2015, the first-ever report describing how RNS performs in terms of real-world discoverability on Google.

We re-ran our analysis for 2016, to see which of 90 different research networking sites has the highest proportion of their people pages among the top 3 search results on Google.

1. Methodology

• Pick 90 different VIVO, Profiles, Pure, and custom RNS websites
• Retrieve a large number of people page URLs (via sitemaps, crawling)
• Grab 100 random people names and URLs from each site
• For each name, search Google for “PersonName InstitutionName”
  • e.g. “Jane Doe Harvard”
• Count what % have pages come up in the top 3

2. Results

1. Brown 93% [VIVO] [under official domain]
2. University of California, San Francisco 90% [Profiles] [under official domain]
3. University of Colorado Profiles 87% [Profiles] [under official domain]
4. Stephenson Cancer Center 87% [Pure]
5. Mayo Clinic 85% [Pure]
6. University of Bristol 84% [Pure] [under official domain]
7. Royal Holloway, University of London 83% [Pure] [under official domain]
8. University of Stirling 83% [Custom] [under official domain]
9. King’s College London 80% [Pure] [under official domain]
10. Oregon Health & Science University 78% [Pure]
11. University of the Highlands and Islands 76% [Pure] [under official domain]
12. University of Melbourne 76% [Custom] [under official domain]
13. Lancaster University 73% [Pure] [under official domain]
14. University of New Mexico 72% [VIVO] [under official domain]
15. Queen’s University Belfast 71% [Pure] [under official domain]
16. University of Strathclyde 70% [Pure] [under official domain]
17. University of St. Andrews 70% [Pure] [under official domain]
18. Northern Arizona University 69% [Pure]
19. Duke 69% [VIVO] [under official domain]
20. MD Anderson Cancer Center 68% [Pure]
21. University of Michigan 64% [Pure] [under official domain]
22. UT Health Science Center at San Antonio 60% [Pure] [under official domain]
23. University of Texas at Tyler 59% [Pure] [under official domain]
24. University of York 59% [Pure] [under official domain]
25. The University of Texas at Austin 56.% [Pure] [under official domain]
26. Medical College of Wisconsin 56.% [Custom] [under official domain]
27. Boston University 55.% [Profiles] [under official domain]
28. Northwestern University 55.% [Pure] [under official domain]
29. University of Texas at San Antonio 51% [Pure] [under official domain]
30. University of Dundee 50% [Pure] [under official domain]
31. University of Minnesota 50% [Pure] [under official domain]
32. Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh 49% [Pure] [under official domain]
33. UT Southwestern Medical Center 48% [Pure] [under official domain]
34. Johns Hopkins University 48% [Pure]
35. University of Miami 46% [Pure]
36. University of Arizona 46% [Pure]
37. University of Nebraska 45% [Pure]
38. University of Utah 44% [Pure]
39. Michigan State University 44% [Pure] [under official domain]
40. University of Texas of the Permian Basin 44% [Pure] [under official domain]
41. Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center 42% [Profiles] [under official domain]
42. University of Massachusetts 41% [Profiles] [under official domain]
43. The University of Texas at Dallas 40% [Pure] [under official domain]
44. UT Health Northeast 40% [Pure] [under official domain]
45. Scripps 39% [VIVO] [under official domain]
46. Case Western Reserve University 39% [Pure]
47. Augusta University 38% [Pure]
48. Western Michigan University 38% [Pure]
49. University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston 38% [Pure] [under official domain]
50. University of Illinois at Chicago 36% [Pure]
51. Houston Methodist 35% [Pure] [under official domain]
52. Albert Einstein College of Medicine 33% [Pure]
53. University of Edinburgh 33% [Pure] [under official domain]
54. University of Florida 32% [VIVO] [under official domain]
55. Arizona State University 31% [Pure]
56. University of Texas Arlington 30% [Pure] [under official domain]
57. Stanford University 30% [Custom] [under official domain]
58. Thomas Jefferson University 29.% [Profiles] [under official domain]
59. The University of Texas at El Paso 28.% [Pure] [under official domain]
60. Cornell 28.% [VIVO] [under official domain]
61. University of Rochester 26% [Profiles] [under official domain]
62. New York University 23% [Pure]
63. University of Iowa 23% [Custom] [under official domain]
64. Clemson University College 22% [Pure]
65. Baylor College of Medicine 20% [Profiles]
66. Indiana University School of Medicine 18% [Pure]
67. Wayne State University 18% [Pure] [under official domain]
68. University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston 17% [Pure] [under official domain]
69. University of South Africa 12% [Pure]
70. University of Idaho 10% [VIVO] [under official domain]
71. Dartmouth 9% [VIVO] [under official domain]
72. Griffith 8% [Custom] [under official domain]
73. George Washington University 4% [VIVO] [under official domain]
74. Tufts 4% [Profiles] [under official domain]
75. US Department of Agriculture 3% [VIVO] [under official domain]
76. University of Montana 2% [VIVO]
77. East Carolina University 1% [VIVO] [under official domain]
78. Texas A&M 0% [VIVO] [under official domain]
79. Boise State 0% [VIVO]
80. University of Hawai‘i 0% [VIVO]
81. Idaho State 0% [VIVO]
82. Montana State University 0% [VIVO]
83. New Mexico State 0% [VIVO]
84. University of Alaska Anchorage 0% [VIVO]
85. UCLA School of Medicine 0% [Custom] [under official domain]
86. University of Nevada, Las Vegas 0% [VIVO]
87. University of Nevada, Reno 0% [VIVO]
88. University of Pennsylvania 0% [VIVO] [under official domain]
89. University of Wyoming 0% [VIVO]
90. Virginia Commonwealth University 0% [VIVO] [under official domain]

3. Conclusions

Which software has the best real-world SEO performance?

Average scores by platform

• Pure = 50%
• Profiles RNS = 44%
• Custom = 39%
• VIVO = 15%

Average scores, by use of official vs. other domain

• Official domain? (e.g. vivo.cornell.edu)
  average score = 44%
• Other domain? (e.g. stephenson.pure.elsevier.com)
  average score = 30%

Average scores by platform, taking domain names into account (where n >= 5)

• Pure + Institutional Domain = 53%
• Profiles + Institutional Domain = 47%
• Pure + other domain = 45%
• Profiles + other domain = 35%*
• Custom + Institutional Domain = 39%
• VIVO + Institutional Domain = 26%
• VIVO + other domain = 18%*

* includes some data from 2015 survey

Does getting lots of incoming links help?

It appears to. The top 10 sites have a median 560 linking root domains — one of several metrics related to incoming link diversity mentioned in the Moz Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015.

The correlation between linking root domains and search rankings holds true across our dataset:

4. How do you increase your site’s search rankings?

Read our helpful guides:

• SEO for Research Networking: How to boost Profiles/VIVO traffic by an order of magnitude
• 5 secrets of a successful UCSF Profiles page