My .EDU webspace - worthless or valuable?

Hey folks,

As a student, I get some "personal webspace" on the university's web server. I was just wondering if it would be of any value SEO-wise, as I don't know much about .edu or .gov links. I've heard Google doesn't care about .edu and .gov much anymore, too..

The URL format is like my.university.edu/blah/something/myusername/ The top level domain is PR5, but my directory has no PR. Would Google automatically recognize my webspace as an "authority" site, as it's on an .EDU domain name?

I'd love to know if this is worth anything.

Thanks for your help.

 

You should build links to your page

But yah, you may be able to sell some links once u do have PR.

Whether or not they count or not, people still chase after .edu

 

.edu is highly rated so yes your page could be worth something if you promote it right

 

Because 'people' are stupid and can't read. Visit Google's own blog or Matt Cutts' blog and you'll find out for yourself - .edu has as much link relevance and weight as any other TLD (whether that be .com, .net or even .info)

 

I know.. but people do still chase after it.

 

There is a huge difference between a link on the main .edu pages versus student pages. IMHO Google gives no value at all to links on student pages because they know students sell links.

/*tom*/

 

No harm in plastering a few links up on your page. I'd go for it.

 

to be honest I don't think edu are taken as more credible. The logic behind it makes sense but in actuality it doesn't seem to work that way, .gov sites do seem to be treated differently - they hold more credibility and getting a link from a .gov site seems to help those sites being linked to them. But of course that could be a result of Government sites getting linked to more often and having more PR to spread across the page.

I've seen edu sites outranked for their own terms, like universities being outranked for the name of their university by .infos. So I don't think it's worth very much, but again it does have value if it it has pagerank. Get some good links to it and maybe you can sell some links on it for sure.

 

main EDU site is an authotity site but not the student pages or blogs. there are lot of EDU sites and millions of student pages. its not reasonable to think that those student EDU pages will pass any authority to any external sites.

 

Do you really believe in everything you read without testing it by yourself?

However, a students page does not mean that would become authority. The .edu TLD exists for its own purpose, and since its for education it is supposed that those sites are clean and informative, thing which can't be guaranteed for a students page so a subdirectory would have some difficulties to get as much value if its not linked directly from the homepage of the .edu site.