Hello DP members; I found this on the net: " A (rather weak) competitor just got an .edu-backlink and pushed me to #2 and #3 for my most important keyword. He skyrocketed from down the ~10/~15 field to #1. As far as I can tell it is ONLY due to the.edu backlink, since nothing has changed on his pages - neither on-page or off-page. How he got the backlink is the SEO-version of a freak accident: There is an obscure industry association, which has a print catalogue once a year with a circulation of 300 pieces! In the 2003 issue of this catalogue my competitor had a paid advertising. Chairmanship for this association went from a German university to one of the big US universities, and as an outworldly consequence the associations website moved there as well. They also put all the past issues of the catalogue on the new website, including hyperlinks to all the paid advertisers. There you go! He invested 200 US$ two years ago and now has an.edu-backlink! Talk about long term revenue... He might not even KNOW that he's #1 in SERPS, and even if he does, he probably wonders why. Advertising prices have moved to 500 US$ in the meantime. I'm probably going to buy and ad in the 2005 issue, hoping to have my.edu-backlink hopefully still this year, or in 2006 at the latest. To keep a long story short:.edu-backlinks still seem to be the holy grail of link building. " "At present, a lot of Web users are in a rush to get some .EDU backlinks. Now, why are they in a rush to acquire this stuff? It's simple. Since websites ending in .EDU are considered trusted sites by Google, they are generally credible, and often webmasters think that a link from an .EDU page with PageRank is more valuable than a link from another page with the same PageRank. .EDU Backlinks Carry Greater Search Engine Weight Today, it is generally accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that search engine giant Google has never admitted it, most SEO and online marketing analysts confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking and leverage... " "Incoming backlinks (IBLs) are all links to a website, whether to the root or if they are deep links. However, although all backlinks are valuable to some degree (even minimally), some are more useful than others. Links from educational, military, or governmental websites, i.e., those ending with .edu, .mil, and .gov, are thought to be the most useful. This is because such websites are very selective in who they choose to link to. Search engines capitalize on this fact and weigh links accordingly." and now i need to know what do you think about having backlinks from .edu, .gov, .mil and .ac.uk sites?
Matt Cutts has stated that .edu and .gov links do not carry any more weight than any other links, however. Matt Cutts stated that most .edu and .gov sites have many backlinks so acquiring a backlink from one of these sites will be valuable, it's not valuable because of it's extension.
guess what, one link isn't usually enough to jump you 15 spots unless it's a VERY high quality link. Also, the link data you see isn't by any means the whole story as far as link data. For example, have you considered that they could be 301'ing a powerful domain to that page to make it rank?
.edu, .gov? What? In my country we don't use this extensions. This extensions only can mean something in US or UK, so when considering PR as a global web leverage it is all bullshit.
Even really small/cheap/bad quality university homepages with .edu TLDs with few or no backlinks generally seem to be at least PR 5 or PR 6 at the very least. I'm only speculating, and I know what Matt Cutts said, but it is possible that there is some type of minor boost in the algorithm for .edu .mil .gov etc. since normal people like us cannot register these domains. There is a difference between what the OP is claiming and what I am claiming. Matt Cutts says a backlink FROM a .edu is treated the same as any other. I am saying that it is possible that .edu sites get a boost to their own PR. Either way, .edu backlinks can't hurt IMO.
There are some google search operator to search .edu and .gov blog. I see that most of blogs that allow dofollow link on comment and approve the comment at once are full of comment spam and the pages also not caching since long time by google. The link you get from such type of comment spam .edu blogs has no any value and it may effect badly on your website. As google always recommend that only the quality and relevant links are helpful for SEO purpose, so we can not expect quality link from such type of comment spam .edu blogs. There are very few .edu website allow you to make your personal blog, you can make your blog there by posting education related information as .edu sites are specially build for educational purpose. You can make post there and link back to relevant website and such type of .edu links are more valuable than link you get from comment spam blog. My opinion is that it is completely useless to expect high ranking by commenting on .edu comment spam blogs. If you make loads of comment spam on such blogs it may even badly effect on your website and the trust level of your website will be down due to getting bad quality link.
There is nothing magical about the extension, but the reason why .edu and .gov domains are more authoritative is because they link out less and are linked to more often than other domains. That is simply it. I used .edu backlinks to get most of my domains to the first page of Google. I was even lucky enough once to get a do-follow backlink from Harvard university. It just happened by chance, but it is the most authoritative backlink I possess. So fight fire with fire. Use a free tool like http://www.edublogfinder.com to get 5-10 backlinks per day. Add SEO Quake to sort out the PR results and you will demolish your comp. Good Luck!
Nice tool! Thanks for the share. Since my blog is about digital ebook readers, I can usually find .edu blogs that are discussing ebooks-perfect!