College search portals in the US
College and university search. Federal data plus rankings publishers, with $18.91 CPC funding lead-gen sites underneath.
Which higher education portals get the most traffic?
By traffic, the largest higher education portals are U.S. News Best Colleges (115.51M monthly visits), Niche (29.46M monthly visits) and Peterson's (2.84M monthly visits). Worldwide figures for 2026-09, third-party estimates from docs.dataforseo.com. Where available, each row below lists the portal's monthly visits next to its operator.
Who buys in US higher education, and is there a single national database?
- Who pays for attention here
- Enrollment marketers, OPMs (online-program managers) and student-loan refinance companies buy the clicks; OPMs are the highest-paying lead buyers.
- What a cross-state index adds
- NCES already aggregates institutional facts nationally, so the open value is joining outcomes (salary, debt, pass rates) across BLS, College Scorecard and state boards — the model the nursing index uses.
- Single national database?
- Yes — a federal one. IPEDS covers every Title IV institution with public data feeds; outcomes need joins with College Scorecard and state licensure boards. Re-evaluated 2026-09-18 (PO): SERP 'college comparison' top-10 is 8 incumbent comparison aggregators (collegescorecard.ed.gov #1 already serves the join from primary data with a machine-accessible API; collegesimply #2, niche #3, bigfuture #4, usnews #5 fill the rest); head term 'colleges near me' is a local-pack intent (3 local + 9 individual college sites). AI-native audit 3/3 false (collegescorecard: 200 to all 3 AI crawlers but no JSON-LD and no dated citation; collegesimply and niche: 403 to all AI crawlers, SSR 58/35 chars). No uncovered cross-vertical value for a new apex portal — online segment is covered by /online-degrees (#239) and the nursing segment by the nursing-host school index.
Source: nces.ed.gov · Last reviewed 2026-09-18
How big is the demand for US higher education?
Google Ads, United States, 2026-09-01- Head keyword
- colleges near me
- Searches / month
- 201,000
- Cost per click
- $18.91
- Advertiser competition
- 45/100
Opening score 64/100 — high click value against thin advertiser competition.
What are the main higher education portals in the US?
The rankings that still set US admissions behaviour, whatever their methodology critics say.
College and K-12 rankings built on student reviews plus federal data — combining government datasets with student rev...
College, graduate school and test prep search with a long-standing print and online publisher heritage.
One application accepted by more than a thousand institutions; the transaction layer of the vertical.
Federal earnings, debt and completion data by institution and field of study — the only outcome data in the vertical.
State-by-state directory of community colleges on CollegeRecon, listing community colleges per state with links to each college site (122 links measured 2026-09-20).
Official alphabetical listing of the California Community Colleges by the statewide system office (cccco.edu, 357 links measured 2026-09-20).
Official college directory of the North Carolina Community College System (nccommunitycolleges.edu, 91 links measured 2026-09-20).
Official explore-colleges directory of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (sbctc.edu, 142 links measured 2026-09-20).