Discovering .gov and .edu backlinks

I was bored, so had a look at the backlinks to our sites in yahoo and low and behold... .edu and .gov backlinks! COOL!

Try this in yahoo:

linkdomain:http://www.yoursite.com/ gov
or
linkdomain:http://www.yoursite.com/ edu

Just skim through the results and look for the gov or edu bolded in the urls.

Anyone know how much these help a site? (our sites that have these links are authority / top ranked sites anyway)... just curious as I could probably get a lot more .edu backlinks.

 

I've heard many a webmaster taut the heavy weight that a .gov link can have; not sure about the .edu but would tend to think it on the same level - it would seem these carry a lot of "implied" weight to engines and directories as to the content authority of a site they're linking to.

Kudos for you!

 

I guess .gov and .edu sites would be top of the pile if TrustRank is ever used.

Cheers for the comment.

 

the next question is, are there any resources where we lowly webmasters may find a .edu or .gov link? Any experience

 

2 edu backlinks bumped my PR up another digit.

Takes a lot of work to get these links, but they are pure gold.

 

.edu are easier to get. Some schools and universities ... teachers and lecturers maintain lists of informational sites on related subjects or course material.

Fish around for you keywords and .edu you may find some. Make sure your page is resourceful, look at what else they link to and contact them with the suggestion.

For .gov links, focus in the local government tier sites, e.g. city or shire councils. They often have links to relevant local resources or sites of interest.

You just have to find which .gov and .edu sites are linking out that are relevant to your site subject, or do a 'honey pot' = create content they would link to, then suggest it.

 

one of the features I added to link harvester is to sort out the .edu and .gov backlinks, but to go that route you still have to know what domain you are researching the backlinks from.

sometimes the best solution for getting those sorts of links is that if you do not have the content or whatever necissary to make them want to link to you just create something that you know they would find appealing based on whatever else they are linking to and then persue the link from there.

I have got a few .edu backlinks from asking, but colleges are typically a bit lazy about updating their sites and many professors do not like to be told where their page is broken or links out to useless resources.

the yahoo advance page offers domain extension filtering, so you can click the .edu button or mention .edu & .gov & .ac.uk & .mil and then search for your topic or slightily broader topics

http://search.yahoo.com/search/options?fr=fp-top&p=