I think that before long Google will (or even has) lost trust in EDU pages. I am seeing more and more threads pop up pointing out hidden links, spam links, and worse, people selling .EDU links down in Buy, Sell, Trade forums. What set me off was a few days ago. I wanted to find the "Wonder Pets" ringtone for my Verizon Phone. Most of the results were to ringtone sites I was not sure I could trust, but then I noticed one pointing to a .EDU site. YAY I thought, but no, I got redirected to Raph.Us I sent a note to Google to complain, and they seemingly have contacted many of the schools involved... try this search: wonder pets ringtones site:.edu (the phone, the phone is winging... the phone, we'll be wight there...) Most are now 404ed, but keep checking, you'll notice not all the schools have gotten around to removing the spam. _____________ I think that webmastering community needs to stand strong against spammers and black hatting SEOers. They are hurting all of us to make a few extra dollars. Q
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=porn+site:.edu&btnG=Search they should widthraw giving much important to .edu backlinks
That search is more Amazing edu Does G really put more weight on edu? Did Matt talk about this topic before?
I'm not sure if he's talked about it, but there seems to be an agreement that EDU and GOV links tend to hold more respect then the average .BIZ domain. How much more is certainly a matter of speculation... and I can assume it's dropping.
Giving this kind of priorities is the straight way to sink these sites with spam flow... unfortunately :/
On his blog, Cutts claimed that Google gives no preference to domain extenstions. However, many SEO experts disagree...At least in the past they did. It's possible that .edu did mean more but has been exploited to the point that they are now "worth" the same as other links.
Well, read somewhere that .edu sites are coming up top in drugs and porn related searches...students, stop making money by renting your free edu space!
I'm not going to lie, I plan to sell blog posts and links on my .edu blog next year. Hopefully their value doesn't drop too much before then, as my free edu page could generate a small amount of easy profit
i do not consider any difference between edu and other domains, and nor google does, as i heard; so edu links are basically not worth anything more than an info; Just my opinion
Dont always belive what Google tells you.... Results like the one I posted before just proves that Google DOES give a higher value to .edu... well atleast for now. Many SEOs have alerted Google to this incluiding Rank Fiskin of SEOMoz in his interveiw with Vanessa Fox from Google, so we can hope that Google takes these factors seriously and does something about the current situation.
I agree. Those results make a compelling argument that .edu extensions are worth more. It's nearly impossible to believe Google and think that those results are just coincidences.
It's sad that they are seemingly focusing on paid links while there is still so much black-hat type things out there like this. I think they need to focus the algorithms at thwarting completely bogus results before they aim things at my blogs footer or worse, my signature...
Yes, and for some of these things they are even getting page one in the SERPS (without using the site: command). I think that if Google used to hold EDU sites in a higher respect, that respect will likely fall VERY soon, as I've seen it again recently (sorry, no link, I was looking for teh pr0n) as it seems that some of the links are using famous names, places, and the like to help them get noticed. And then G wants to punish me for selling my sig *sigh*
Don't complain about it guys, join in instead. Go down to your local college with a 6 pack and a large pizza. It will take you about 5 minutes to get somebody to hand over thier webspace accounts.
If Google says they don't treat tlds any different then they are probably telling the truth. newsite.edu is no more highly ranked than newsite.biz. However think about how old most of the .edu domains are. If Google even slightly factors in the age of a domain, the .edu sites have a huge headstart on the rest of the internet. Many of those domains were registered before the internet was even open to the public (you do remember those days don't you?) For example. Harvard, Stanford and Yale were all registered over 20 years ago. 20 years! If Google gives any type of weight toward old domains, how do you think your 2 week old site is going to fair compared to an old established .edu. The other reason .edu's do better is because they are linked to by very trusted sites. So regardless of the PR, they have very high trust rank as well.