As far as value goes for an edu or gov link..I think you guys are right on about the "quality and authoritative" vice the tld. With that said... If anyone is interested...I can most likely get you listed on a .gov if you really want one. Name your price. If you're a trusted member of DP, you don't have to pay until the link is live. (Since I am not the webmaster of the site, I cannot guarantee how long it will be up, but most seem to stay up if they aren't broken). Sites must be quality sites...not junk, no adsense sites or sites that were slapped together in 5 minutes. PM me
Yes... but most current students or alumni can get a page or two fairly easy... that is where most of the .edu spam comes from.
most of the .edu spam comes from hacked or badly configured CMS, wiki and forum software. If you look at most of the "buy viagra" spam in google you can see lots of examples of this.
yep, well aware of that. someone asked how hard it is to get a .edu domain though. and that isn't easy.
Any extension can escape the sandbox however you are correct that certain ones get special attention in new sites however after sandbox there is no difference except the .edu/gov as they are restricted.
.edu has always been rumored to have more authority then the other TLDs but its just the case of too many backlinks most of the times IT
I remember hearing someone talking about how Matt Cutts actually said that they have no authority factor when it comes to Google's algorithm, but I kind of don't believe it..... .gov and .edu's are not available to public and thus should be trusted more 99% of the time.... IMO
.edu is just provided to education organization.. so Spamming on that site is seen in very few case.. might be that is one thing which google considers.
Sorry for the "me too" post, but I completely agree. It's the age of the domain that matters, not the extension. For the record, I use this free backlink analysis tool to find out the age of the domain. Warkot
nah, i'm with you on all the domains people can buy, .com .info .tv .org -- all of them, im sure they are seen the same, as they are all avilable to anyone But like some people have said, google knows that ONLY officals can get .gov and .edu It would be great if someone could buy a few domains, with differnt extensions, that has no other results and google, and just see in what order they come out in.
Matt Cutts says alot of things in the best interest of Google which are not totally honest. Don't use him as a seo resource. May I ask how many sites you have done seo on? Not that your opinion doesn't count but when some of the most reputed seo in the industry find something to be true it usually is. From research i have done Google does put a higher importance on .edu/gov ext because they are usually educational or government sites which are important.
I am a seo so work with many sites and over this time I have gotten edu links and they always bring high value. One edu link can get you out/past sandbox. Of course they all have different values but no matter how new or how few links(even checking with Yahoo or msn which index all links they find) they always pass high value. Edu are rumored to have lots of good backlinks which some do and some don't. Some have very few. yet even these bring very high value which is hard to find with a .com. Back to the backlinks of edu domains. I always hear people say. 'Edu have no more value then a .com or another ext it is just because they have good edu/gov links' Which puts you back to square one were edu are worth more even with equal factors. Go edu hunting and try and get yourself some backlinks and see what you think for yourself. Most think they are too hard to get which is one reason they are supposed to be so valuable but they really aren't if you have a good site.
I agree with last post. I have 2 points to make: 1) It might be possible to get one or two .edu links, but I doubt it is easy to get more than that... whereas a good site could get over 10 or 20 .edu links. That's the difference. [And .gov are even harder to get...] 2) It comes down to the basic idea behind SEO, which is to "create a good website." That is the easiest way to get lots of backlinks. Link exchanges and those schemes can work, but in the long run we never know as search engines get more sophisticated, etc. The only long-term and best solution is to create a good website...
I have done my own research what example edu sites have you seen that have few links yet still seem to pass an unusual amount of trust over to a domain? I've personally never seen this. I honestly believe the .edu/.gov thing (as well as a lot of other things in the SEO industry...) are just about people not being able to seperate the concepts of correlation and causation.
Google is all about credibility, many people don't understand it. Having a .edu is definitely adding credibility, so are many other factors. Age of domain etc.
of course google is about credibility. but that doesn't mean the domain extension .edu is automatically worth more somehow. have you seen the average student page on university websites? they're horrible, without even bring credibility into account. and plenty of other universities don't use a .edu domain. .edu is primarily used for US institutions; giving a huge benefit to .edu sites would essentially, in turn, give more power to US sites. as their goal's to organize the world's information, factors that would result in US-centricism seem unlikely.
I have seen the crap some students put up, but I'm not sure that Google takes that into consideration