The University of Wisconsin is at the top of the rankings when it comes to internet "brand equity":
What's internet brand equity? It's a measure of who's talking about you online, based on Internet data, social media, blogs and the top 75,000 print and electronic media outlets. The resulting tool, the group claims, gauges the relative value of the various institutions and how they change over time.
The Global Language Monitor created their ranking system in order to eliminate what they described as inherent bias in the other published ranking systems. Rather than emphasizing the opinions of college deans, high school guidance counselors and the ratio of the endowment to the number of students, GLM believes their method reflects the opinion of the world at large.
I'm glad to have done my small part to establish our buzzworthiness!
It's not widely known, but Wisconsin is the top school in federal research dollars, and much of the internet buzz comes from our impact in science. So seeing us atop a list with Chicago, Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley and Texas is no surprise.
Oh, and the football team doesn't hurt.