The Cybermetrics Lab, a research group based in Spain, has ranked Cornell No. 4 in the world for its Web presence.

The group, part of the largest public research body in Spain called Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, published its first "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities" in 2004. The ranking is published twice a year. Its purpose is to underscore the importance of Web presence and publication for "dissemination of academic knowledge" and "for measuring scientific activities, performance and impact."

Institutional websites are judged based on their size or the number of pages available on search engines (20 percent); visibility or the number of external links (50 percent); rich files or the volume of relevant academic and publication activities (15 percent); and the number of papers and citations for each academic domain (15 percent).

The latest ranking published in July put Cornell one position higher than its No. 5 spot on the last Webometrics ranking in January. The top schools in the latest ranking were Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University and then Cornell, followed by University of California-Berkeley.

The complete list is available at http://www.webometrics.info.