Web publishing ratings of world universities with a focus on Australia.
Webometrics ranks world universities by the volume of material they post on the internet and the number of external links to that material.
Each individual ranking indicates a university's reputation and prominence online. The rating system complement research and reputation rankings from QS, Times and Shanghai ARWU.
Webometrics Ranking for Australia: 2026
| Aust rank | University | World rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | University of Melbourne | 37 |
| 2 | University of New South Wales | 41 |
| 3 | University of Queensland | 49 |
| 4 | University of Sydney | 56 |
| 5 | Monash University | 62 |
| 6 | Australian National University | 89 |
| 7 | University of Adelaide | 117 |
| 8 | University of Western Australia | 140 |
| 9 | UTS | 152 |
| 10 | Deakin University | 180 |
| 11 | RMIT University | 187 |
| 12 | Macquarie University | 188 |
| 13 | QUT | 197 |
| 14 | Curtin University | 212 |
| 15 | Griffith University | 219 |
| 16 | University of Wollongong | 250 |
| 17 | La Trobe University | 289 |
| 18 | University of Newcastle | 295 |
| 19 | University of Tasmania | 321 |
| 20 | University of South Australia | 343 |
| 21 | Western Sydney University | 347 |
| 22 | Flinders University | 349 |
| 23 | Swinburne | 360 |
| 24 | James Cook University | 412 |
| 25 | Edith Cowan University | 429 |
| 26 | Murdoch University | 494 |
| 27 | Charles Sturt University | 568 |
| 28 | Victoria University | 608 |
| 29 | University of Canberra | 646 |
| 30 | Australian Catholic University | 650 |
| 31 | University of New England | 679 |
| 32 | CQUniversity | 717 |
| 33 | Charles Darwin University | 733 |
| 34 | Southern Cross University | 744 |
| 35 | University of the Sunshine Coast | 794 |
| 36 | UniSQ | 823 |
| 37 | Bond University | 836 |
| 38 | Federation University Australia | 973 |
| 39 | University of Notre Dame | 1172 |
| 40 | Torrens University Australia | 1233 |
| 41 | Avondale University | 3846 |
| 42 | University of Divinity | 3983 |
Ranking of Australian Universities
The 2026 Webometrics rankings show that Australian universities perform strongly in terms of global research visibility and online reach, rather than reputation or teaching quality. Webometrics places heavy emphasis on how widely research is published, indexed, linked, and accessed on the web.
How do Australian universities rank?
The results indicate that the University of Melbourne is Australia’s top-ranked university, placing 37th globally. It is followed closely by UNSW and the University of Queensland, with University of Sydney and Monash University rounding out a clear top five. These institutions combine high research output with strong international digital visibility.
Unlike reputation-driven rankings, Webometrics highlights how effectively universities make their research accessible. This explains why several Australian institutions perform well despite receiving less attention in traditional prestige-based tables.
What about non-Go8 universities?
While the Group of Eight dominates the very top of the rankings, Webometrics also surfaces strong performers outside the Go8. Universities such as UTS, Deakin, RMIT, Macquarie, QUT, and Griffith University all rank within the global top 250, reflecting high levels of research dissemination and online impact.
This is a key distinction from rankings such as QS or THE. Webometrics is less about perception and more about measurable digital presence, which makes it useful for understanding research reach.
Webometrics Ranking Method
The ranking formula has 4 components:
- Impact (50%): Number of links to the university's website
- Presence (17%): Number of web pages published by the university
- Openness (17%): Number of academic publications on the internet
- Excellence (17%): Number of academic publications on the internet that are cited often.
Value to Future Students
The Webometrics rankings offer an alternative measure of the overall strength of universities.
According to Webometrics, the purpose of the rankings is to promote global access to academic knowledge produced by universities. To pursue higher Webometrics rankings, a university needs to enlarge its online academic research footprint.
Top universities are publishing millions of pages produced by dozens of departments and services, hundreds of research teams and thousands of scholars. Strong web presence informs of a wide variety of factors that are clearly correlated with the global quality of the institution.
While encouraging open access to research knowledge is a good thing, the rankings have limited relevance to study choices. The rankings objectively measure web presence. Web presence and education quality do not have a strong, direct relationship.
A large web presence is a combination of university size, research focus, and commitment to web publishing. Increasing any of these indicates institutional strength. But they are not reliable ways to improve teaching services.
About the Author
Dr Andrew Lancaster, PhD (Economics) is an Australian higher-education analyst and economist. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Australian National University (ANU).
Since 2013, he has researched and written about Australian universities and global ranking systems. His work covers Times Higher Education (THE), QS, ARWU (Shanghai), and Webometrics.
His analysis focuses on ranking methodology, weighting systems, reputation bias, and signalling effects. A core theme is separating genuine institutional brand value from misleading assumptions about teaching quality and student experience.
Dr Lancaster has advised thousands of university students on how to interpret rankings realistically when choosing a degree. He is the founder and editor of AustralianUniversities.click, which publishes independent, data-driven analysis of Australian higher education.
