According to the updated international rating of Webometrics, which was published in January 2018, Vitebsk State University named after P.M. Masherov ranks the 13th among the universities of the Republic of Belarus and the 1st among Vitebsk region universities.

Compared to the previous edition of the rating VSU has improved its performance by moving two positions closer to the top.

Webometrics Ranking of World Universities has been compiled for more than 10 years by the Spanish research laboratory "Laboratorio de Internet" and is updated twice a year: in January and July. The ranking of universities is based on the four indicators that characterize the level of scientific publications and the universities web presence: «influence» – the citation of the site, "presence" – the size of the site, "openness" – the number of files according to the web search engine Google Scholar, and "quality" – the number of University staff publications, that made the cut in 10% of the most cited in the world according to the scientometric database Scopus.