Well we’ve only just gone and done it again!
Last summer we created a bit of a stir when we first published our definitive 100 best elearning websites chart, so this time round we thought: why not turn things up a notch?. Why settle on just the Top 100 when we could be spotlighting the 250 best elearning websites? Why offer just one consolidated ranking position per company website when we could lift the lid on the six top indicators that influence our chart most. And finally, why not just make the whole thing interactive too, so that search and social savvy webucation marketers who don’t think we’ve come up with the learning tech industry’s best overall ranking formula, can come up with their own.
Risky move? Well it might be. Better take the time now to check out the new chart before we bottle it and change our minds.
My company isn’t in the best elearning websites chart and I think it should be
We’re good, but we’re not perfect. Over 1000 companies are analysed to produce the 100 best elearning websites and we’re adding more all the time. You can be 100% sure that your company is included in future analysis by signing up to Nowfriday newsletter (the #Learning tech edition) here.
Tell me about the marketing tools and tactics that these companies do get into the best elearning websites chart
The all new Marketing Spending Review for marketers in L&D is out now. Get the highlights in our infographic then download the full report to see what the best B2B marketers in L&D will be spending budget on over the next 18 months.
What’s it all mean?
Check out the “how to read the 100 best eLearning websites chart” section at the bottom of the page.
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About the chart
Our best elearning websites chart focuses on commercial operators whose primary market is b2b learning. Larger companies with specific divisions or product sets targeting the learning industry are included but only specific portions of their website have been used in the ranking (for instance, Adobe.com/captivate or webex.co.uk/products/elearning-and-online-training.html). Institutes, schools & colleges are not included, but if they were, the Open University, Coventry University and others would be in the chart.Trade publications like eLearning Age or TrainingZone.co.uk , or industry bodies like eLearning Network or Towards Maturity are also ommitted from the chart, as are vendors or resellers like Coursemerchant.com.
How to read the chart
Overall Ranking
The overall ranking for each company is calculated by crunching together individual rankings from Google PageRank, Moz Rank, Alexa, Hubspot‘s Web grader and Compete.
Rankings from link-based measurement tools like Moz or Google PageRank are given more weight than tools like Compete or Alexa, which use smaller samples. We’ve also considered the number of pages that a website has indexed in Google, social reach and the number of domains linking-in to each website. All ranking tools have strengths and weaknesses, but together they paint an interesting and valuable picture we think.
Google page rank
Ah yes, the big quality score from the people who run the Internet. Google Page Rank scores a website 0 (low) to 10 (high).
See this Wiki page if you’d like to know more.
Hubspot
The Hubspot Website Grader’s job is to sniff out all of the search, social and structural stuff that makes a website well equipped for effective inbound marketing (conversion pages, subscription options for twitter or RSS feeds, mobile readiness, etc) . Sites are scored from 0 (low) to 100 (high) depending on what it finds.
MozRank
An algorithmically scaled 10-point measure of global link power or popularity, Mozrank is one of the SEO analysts’ favourites (possibly because it’s quite hard to understand). Put as simply (crudely) as we like to put things, lots of people say Moz is quite a lot like Google PageRank, except that it scores a site dynamically where Google PageRank ranks a site periodically. In our experience, when we compare scores from Google PageRank and MozRank over time we think there’s some evidence to say that a site with a higher Moz score than a Google PR score may be gaining popularity. If Moz scores are lower than Google PR scores, the site may be on a downward curve.
Google indexed pages
Not one for the rocket scientists. This the number of pages on a website that Google knows about. When this number is smaller than the number of pages that actually exist on a website, it can be a good idea to submit a site map to google.
Alexa traffic rank
Probably the best known of the three most popular traffic measurement services, Alexa ranks the world’s most popular website (Google) at number one and works back from there, so the smaller the number the better. Like most traffic measurement services, Alexa gathers data generated from a pool of web surfers who have a special toolbar installed on their browser. Some SEO experts criticise traffic measurement services like Alexa, Compete or Quantcast, claiming that smaller samples can produce misleading results.
Inbound links
Easy one. It’s the number of sites that link in. Google believes that the best sites are the ones with the most authoritative links linking in.
Company website
The url analysed to allocate the ranking.
place in the space
If the site’s title tag contained a meaningful description we’ve used it here, if not we’ve done our best to estimate.