English

Abstract

The study discussed in this article is aimed to evaluate and compare the international digital library websites to explore their performances and efficiencies, based on search engine optimization. Moz Link Explorer and Google PageRank—two freely available search engine optimization sources—have been used as webometric tools for collecting the required data from the websites of selected digital libraries. Web impact factor (WIF) for each digital library website has also been calculated in terms of internal web impact factor (IWIF), external web impact factor (EWIF), and simple web impact factor (SWIF). The investigation revealed that amongst all the 10 selected international digital libraries, the World Digital Library leads with the highest page authority, external followed link, total links, linking domains, and followed linking domains. The Universal Digital Library with the highest ‘domain authority’ has the lowest linking domains and followed linking domains. The lowest domain authority and page authority is attributed to Digital Library of International Research while lowest number of total links is attributed to Digital Library of Georgia. In terms of Google PageRank evaluation, Universal Digital Library has secured the highest page rank and Core Page Review (CPR) score, however, is in a low position in terms of the lowest referring domains, global rank, indexed URLs, trust flow, trust metric as well as weak page rank quality. Subsequently, the exploration of web impact factor of the select digital libraries disclosed that the International Children's Digital Library secured the first position in terms of IWIF and SWIF. In contrast, on the grounds of EWIF, Universal Digital Library is leading the list.