Last september, I had the chance to attend STI-ENID 2025 (September 3-5), which took place in the beautiful city of Bristol (United Kingdom). It was such an inspiring experience, full of brilliant talks, great conversations, and wonderful people.
I had the opportunity to give a talk prepared with Enrique Orduña, Carlos Lopezosa, and Isidro Aguillo, titled “SEO Metrics for Enhanced Academic Research Visibility: A Comparative Study of Global and Countr-Level“. In this work, we compared four popular SEO tools (Ahrefs, Semrush, Serpstat, and Ubersuggest) to examine how they measure organic traffic for two major open-access publishers: MDPI and Frontiers.
The results were quite striking: the tools gave very different traffic estimates, both globally and at the country level. This really highlights how important it is to use multiple sources and push for more transparency and standardization in how we measure academic web visibility.
Apart from the session I participated in, I absolutely loved all the talks I could attend. They were packed with fresh ideas, new perspectives, and plenty of inspiration for projects I’d love to work on in the coming months. And honestly, one of the best parts of the conference was the people, I met so many kind, smart and passionate colleagues from around the world. It truly made the whole experience unforgettable.
And of course, Bristol itself was wonderful. It’s such a cool city, full of things to see, with beautiful walks (Enrique can attest!) and a really special atmosphere. The venue, University of Bristol, made the experience even more magical. With its stunning architecture and grand hall, walking through the buildings felt as if Hogwarts had opened its doors for a muggle research conference.
To top it off, we were lucky to have fantastic weather throughout most of the trip, which made exploring the city even more enjoyable.
The journey there was also quite entertaining. I travelled with Enrique, and we spent the flight planning the next few months of work. There was even a funny moment during our connection, we had just boarded the second plane when they made everyone get off again because the crew wasn’t on board yet, I joke that I could probably have flown us without problems (not 😂).
On the way back, it felt like Bristol didn’t want to let us go. We had to wait to board the plane as is started to pour with rain. A very British goodbye.
See you in the next session!