For the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities more than 20,000 websites of universities and colleges were compared. The criteria for the ranking were the visibility of the site, search engine results, the linking, the number of citations in Google Scholar (that searches numerous academic servers), and the number of PDF documents, text documents, or presentation slides.

The university’s top position in the Webometrics website comparison was also confirmed in the current “4 International Colleges & Universities” ranking. In this case Freie Universität achieved first place in Germany, 15th in Europe, and 88th worldwide.

The domain www.fu-berlin.de, which has more than 155,000 websites and PDF documents, was also honored in May with the Web Dialogue Award by the Berlin-based IT company Infopark AG in the category “Contact & Communication.” Two features deserving particular mention for conferral of the Web Dialogue Award were customer service, i.e., the easy accessibility of contacts through contact forms and telephone hotlines, and the management of customer relationships.