Was recently lucky enogh to get two government links. Both are not .gov but .com's (still Canadian federal level government run websites) Do single links like this have much effect on how google see's my site?
.gov and .edu sites are NOT given any preference or special treatments over websites with other extensions. If any of the websites is trusted by google, has quality external links pointing to them and good pagerank, then yes it will help you in the serps.
IMO they are gold, I know it is your gold mine, but would you please PM some hints about getting some of them from Canadian websites
I disagree,, edu's are great url's to get backlinks from and I'd say .gov's are as well tho I've never read up on them. I have head many SEO consultants say this about the .edu's
Any of the site run by government or non profitable organisations are always preffered . A link from these sites is always very ....very benificial .
Link from which page is coming, also matters alot becasue these .edu sites have 100k+ pages indexed under google. And I am sure google will prefer to trust quality of the a pge rather than quality of the site.
Ture, non-profit links are good. I had a .org site in 2002 and it was indexed right away and remained in google even after I stopped it. Should've kept in it.
Matt Cutt's has stated several times that .edu's or gov's are NOT treated any differently than another extension, however, those extensions have a much greater chance of being a trusted site, which will certainly help you more with SERP's than a PR6 link from a non-trusted site. Because of the greater chance of being a "trusted site", edu's and gov's are certainly good links.
Very true MJewel and I was going to say the same thing Too many people rely only on pagerank, sure they might not give any extra weight via pagerank, but most .edu's and .gov sites are well trusted in the search engines, and just because a site has poor pr doesn't mean it can't help you in the serps, a link from a well trusted site can do wonders for you. If it wasn't the case, why did so many people spam wikipedia so much before they added the nofollow on all outgoing links (which I still think is a big mistake)
I don't believe everything Matt says, and either should you. Either edu or gov sites are given higher weight or they all just have phenomenal back links, trust, and authority build up behind them. The interesting thing would be to find a edu that is very new and see if it helps with a link or not. I personally believe that edu and gov links are given more weight.
If it's a .com you can consider getting a backlink from a good PR6 webpage, who runs the website doesn't matter when it's not .gov .edu or .mil About the "treated differently" thing. I saw many examples that those affect greatly. Logically, if i were to design an algorhytm, i'd consider them "a bit" differently as well. If there aren't too many links on that page you can place a on your face. (b/c some websites like that have a links page with 1000's of links)
If Matt Cutts had said 'yes', then every spammer in the known universe would try to hack .edus at get their links onto their pages. Sometimes you have to lie.
Those posts are run through google legal. You don't want to get caught lying in a public company and Cutt's has no need to lie - he doesn't answer, or he cleverly and carefully words what he posts. You have to read through what he is saying - and I can assure you that some edu links carry absolutely no weight. As a general rule, edu's carry much more trust - and absolutely positively pass no more PR. I have hundreds of edu links between a number of sites and wish they were the magic trick. Do you really think google is stupid about buying links on student edu pages? Within the last two weeks, I believe google shifted their algorithm and edu's now carry less weight. Natural edu links are gold, spam blog posts and student pages aren't.
I’m one of several Googlers who answer questions online and sometimes for the press. I usually handle questions about webmasters or SEO, so in those areas I’m more likely to make sense and less likely to say something stupid. If I post something here that you find helpful as you build or manage your web presence, that’s wonderful. But when push comes to shove: This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer. Q: Heh. Did you get a talking to? A: No, I haven’t. Hopefully I never will. Q: Why are you doing this now? A: Just in case. If I say something stupid in the future, it’s better to be able to point out that the stupidity is mine, and mine alone. My stupidity! You can’t have it! ------ I don't think that Matt runs his posts though Google legal, although I could be wrong. He has never stated so. I do believe that he doesn't want .edu and other "special" domains to be spammed though. I like 99% of what Matt posts, on this issue "I" just believe that edu's help out assuming all factors are the same more than a regular com.
Matt has mentioned running posts through google legal before. As someone who used to run a Nasdaq company (nothing near the size of google) - I can assure you the legal department is involved when it comes to anything related to company operations. There are billions of dollars at stake. I'm don't think he clears everything he posts, and he may post things without clearance - but you would see a retraction if he posted something that was material or a falsehood.
You mentioned that the extention is a .com and not .gov well even if its a goverment website but doesnt have the extention then it's worth the same as a normal link. It must have the . gov extention
You can't put a price on .gov links they are the best and the hardest to get hold of, I am trying to come up with a way so that I can get one off my local council.
This is just a guessing game. No one outside of Google knows for sure. But as someone has already pointed out, .edu and .gov are more likely to be trusted sites than others.