About four weeks ago Google may have begun favoring .edu sites. The two examples below illustrate the problem. *Plagiarism In June, 2005 The University at Dallas Texas (utdallas.edu) plagiarized content regarding pornography addiction from SexualControl.com created in 1999. Go to http://SexualControl.com/google-prefers-edu-01.html for a Google search on pornography addiction as recent as June 3, 2007. The utdallas.edu plagiary is fourth. Until four weeks ago, http://SexualControl.com/pornography-addiction.html was in that spot. UTDallas.edu's plagiary wasn't even listed. Now SexualControl.com isn't listed. Why did Google suddenly list a .edu plagiary page and eliminate the original .com page? Go to http://SexualControl.com/utd-plagiary.html to see utdallas.edu's plagiary *Another .com page replaced by a .edu duplication Until four weeks ago, SexualControl.com was in the top five for sex addiction and sexual addiction. Then it wasn't in the first 500. In October 2001, Kent State accidentally duplicated SexualControl.com's index page. The duplication had been eliminated from Google's main search until approximately four weeks ago. I discovered this by searching for duplications of Sexualcontrol.com's index page. Go to http://SexualControl.com/google-prefers-edu-02.html for a June 3, 2007 Google search on "Sexual addiction is more deceptive than most other addictions." Listserve.kent.edu is second. SexualControl.com isn't listed. At my request, Kent State removed their duplicated copy about three weeks ago. Also at my request, Google removed the Kent State page from its database approximately May 15. I assume SexualControl.com will eventually regain its position. But, why did Google again replace a .com page with a .edu duplication? Besides preferring .edu sites what other explanations are there? Respectfully, Joe Zychik PS This document is dedicated to the Chinese dissidents who pursued their right to free speech and ended up in Chinese prisons while Google censors searches in China. The company that preaches, "Don't do evil" doesn't mind profiting from evil. I hope Google isn't censoring in the US also.
The .edu site probably has higher pagerank and/or trustrank. If cnn.com had posted a bunch of your content, I have a feeling you'd be in the same boat. The .edu doesn't matter, the fact that it's an old established site with lots of inbound links does.
Yes Google favours the site with the higher authority. I've been saying this to people for a long time who "think" the domain who has is first is fine. Proved this to a friend who had a 18 month PR3 original article. I copied it and 48 hours he was gone and i was number one. Needless to say he believes me now, conditions of the bet.. I now own the article
Yea, search engines count .edu links as a bonus and also .gov links- so I'm thinking they do the same for the rankings
As far as I know the TLD does not matter, just site authority and PR. If two pages with identical content are found Google will show the one with the highest pagerank. Google has no way of veryfying what is the original and they don't care. They just want to present good content - no matter who was there first.