Myth of .edu, .gov links counting more in Google SERPs

I was wondering what you think: .edu, .gov have some importance in ranking?

I personally think .info is worse than .com, at least that's what I've seen from experience. Despite the fact that some say it's all the same...

This is what Matt Cutts said:

Typically, our policy is: a link is a link, is a link; wherever that link’s worth is, that is the worth that we give it. Some people ask about links from DMOZ, links from .edu or links from .gov, and they say: “Isn’t there some sort of boost? Isn’t a link better if it comes from a .edu?” The short answer is: no, it is not. It is just .edu links tend to have higher PageRank, because more people link to .edu’s or .gov’s.

 

I just want to say that Google love the authority sites. and the higher authority sites are the .edu or the . gov site. that's the reason Google love them.

 

.Edu & .Gov are usually quality and genuine sites!
These sites generally have less or no spam backlinks.
So when you place a link to such quality sites, you will be definitely gifted with quality backlinks.
I don't know how much beneficial are these links to your site, but yes, due to recent panda & penguin updates, you should build quality backlinks.

 

Yes, as a matter a fact, they explicitly tell us the fact that authority sites count.
But on the other hand, Matt Cutts himself has allegedly affirmed that all TLDs are the same... so how should we act?

 

yes, you are partially correct.
Domain extension isn't that important, its the content quality that matters.
Also, HIGH PR backlinks from edu and gov sites does matter.

 

It's correct to some extension. Although I am definitely sure that Google loves links from authority sites and if you are able to get one, you will see the result yourself.

 

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]SearchEngine Page Rank doesn't depends on the domain name. As SearchEngines are not bother about the domain name of your website, whatmakes difference is the content, Map & some other factor too, butnot the domain name for sure.[/FONT]

 

I have no idea what I'm talking about knowing well that I'm a total hopeless newbie. But here is a small incident (and I'm surprised to see this associated thread because it happened just a week or so ago):

Someone told me that a blogger link to an .edu site (which is in your niche) will pitch my blog ranking all the way to the Google heap. Cool. So how do i do that for my teeny-weeny humble tech blog? You have to have a link in .edu sites. Great. So I found two .edu sites. So how do I have my humble blog link in there? Comment. And that too, not just some generic "Hey nice article" comment but a sober, relevant, intellectually combative and 'informative' comment. So I left a comment in each of the two .edu sites. (By the looks of it, both the .edu sites must be getting quite a lot of visitors) and forgot about it and went about doing my usual blog errands like nothing happened and the world was still simple.

Now here's the punchline. Normally I get about 1, 200 to 1, 400 pageviews a day (from about 2, 400 to 2,700 unique visitors). I have about 45 articles in my tech blog. Since i started my blog in 2011 the figures have remained more or less the same. No drastic variation throughout the year UNTIL the previous week.

Anyway, exactly a week after I left the comments on the two .edu sites I logged in one fine afternoon and guess what? The 1, 200-to-1,400 pageviews in my blog that I was used to seeing in my blog since the preceding about 14 months, were no longer there anymore - in its place was well a nice jump in traffic about 4, 000-4, 800 unique visitors a day. Pageviews went up to about 2, 900-3, 000. I know it sounds freaky and fantastic. And the highest one-day-traffic I could get out of Facebook, Twitter, Redit or Stumbleupon put together over the past one year was about 400 visitors combined. I never better that score until the .edu thing happened.

The truth is I don't know whether its a sudden, pure coincidence that just a week previously I linked to two .edu sites and the traffic jumped (but the huge, drastic jump in traffic and pageviews tell me that it isn't some freaky coincidence). And I don't write new materials every day, maybe two posts a week at the most for that blog.

I don't know either whether the traffic will be consistent (so far the traffic is increasing for me. It varies between 4, 000 to 6, 800, increasing, as you can see, since the preceding 8 days). I don't know what is happening, whether traffic and pageranks from .edu linking etc etc are myth or reality but one thing I do know is this: Nothing is awesome'est than awesome'r traffic and I'm not complaining!

PS: I joined digital point just a few days ago and have no signature or link privileges so I guess screenshots or live links to my blog may have to wait. or is there some other way?

 

I agree that backlink is a backlink but .edu and .gov basically is better in term of quality and it is not easily being removed compare to other extension. That's why people looking for .edu and .gov backlink, it is stronger

 

Perhaps this is because .edu and .gov sites tend to have many quality backlinks and other references, good bounce rates, visitors return to them and so on... they must have great metrics.
So I reckon, it's not because of the TLD itself, but the credit that these sites receive!

 

You definitely can't go wrong with .gov or .edu..but we all know .com rules!!

 

So .edu links are better than .com backlinks because in general more people link to them giving these backlinks more power.

 

Mr. Dog,

This is an interesting question. The extension itself is not what is making many of the .edu and .gov sites rank better than other extensions. Often, these sites are authority sites with good, relevant content; something Google likes. So, when making a decision on where to link, people should make sure that the links are relevant to their content rather than trying to make a certain extension work. These are some good articles that break down this myth:

http://searchengineland.com/explaining-edu-link-value-with-examples-64012
http://www.seodiscovery.org/seo-myths/domain-extensions-do-they-matter#axzz26xoQEWM5

Hope this answers your question,

Shawn

 

Well agree. The good thing about .edu and . gov is that it has a higher ranking. Its great to link your site there to pass some link juice that will help to increase the PR and ranking of your website.

 

Well its quite simple, try opensite explorer and pick top 10 results in any niche.Check out tld section in opensite explorer and you will notice why those top sites are ranking.

 

I agree with all but I want to know that if my website is related of web development. So, how to put my link or how to exchange my link in .edu, .gov site? Because its a irrelevant category link building.

 

In this case you might need to find blogs and comment on them to get a link.

 

Any old .EDU or .GOV link isn't neccassarily going to count for more than a .com link- but the reality is that a large majority of these .EDU's/.GOV's are authority sites with excellent domain authority; that's why it's still worth picking them up where you can.

WebDev

 

Yes, yes... in this sense you are right! Because .edu sites are generally highly appreciated institution sites... and they get tons of good backlinks.

But there are tons of other sites, generally with .com in their address, which do the same thing...

So we should say: authority sites are important, which are not necessarily .edu sites... but in particular .edu URLs might have a higher proportion of "good reputation sites"...

 

I'd say this is a myth and not a myth.

As SEO old-timers would bear witness, this issue has been coming up for discussion and debate in the SEO communities time and again, since many years now.

A logical evaluation of the situation would be that:

As a class, .edu and .gov sites generally

1) Have higher (and natural) Link Popularity/PR
2) Enjoy 'authority' status
3) Enjoy 'trust rank'
4) Don't sell links

and therefore, links from these domains (TLDs) usually deliver (significantly) higher ranking/PR benefits as compared to other types of domains. At some point in time, SEOs/Web Masters at large started noticing this (without realizing the real factors causing this to happen) and thus, the 'myth' of .edu and .gov links counting more in Google was born.