I have read that .gov and .edu inbound links are highly regarded by Google.
1. what is the degree of benefit? having say 100 standard (earned, not paid) IBLs and one .gov IBL for instance, does that single .gov link give much more authority to that site or does there need to be a higher ratio to gain real benefit?
2. Is there a difference in weight of authority benefit between .gov and .edu - which, if either, is better? I assume cc following .gov or .edu is of no consequence?

Does anyone here have .gov or .edu links to any of their sites, if so once linked did you notice ranking changes, PR and/or SERP?

Does anyone have resources as to where to obtain such links easily? (willing to share). Are such links closely guarded or do domainers willingly share such resources?

cheers,
Mike

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i dunno if the gov/edu extension really has that much to do with anything, more that these sites have natural authority because of the content/links.

if you want a real link from gov/edu, take a look at who they link to and why. You'd probably have to put in fair bit of resources to come up with something they'd be willing to link to.

if you're just after some spammy links, figure out some google dorks for finding blogs/wikis/classifieds

interesting comments Joe and an extremely informative response to my query - I am much better informed now

Blue = I was under the assumption that the authority that these sites have is what makes the links from them beneficial??
Red = what is a real link as opposed to a ?? link ??
Green = what makes a link from a .edu or .au blog "spammy" ??

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many gov and edu sites will never link to affiliates or non big brands with out a very good reason.

The way companies get around this is by sponsoring university or local gov community events in exchange for links, it has been common practice for say 12 years online.

I think gov links and edu links are important but high authority, crazy domain authority links which are relevant to your site and highly relevant are more powerful.

If Google sees a edu site is out linking to 20 random websites all from different niches they can pick up the pattern.

My advice is to focus on relevant links to your website, it will work the best.

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Yep, although some folks postulate that the extension somehow adds something special that a non gov/edu wouldn't.

Real = editorial in nature, like if you conducted a study and had that referenced.

What I mean is crappy links that are easy to replicate and unlikely to pass much value, like blog comments and the like.

So a link from a .gov or .edu forum has little value beyond any other non editorial / non super duper similar topic high PR site link - is that what I am reading?

Are there exceptions like say a .gov or .edu forum that is not linking out to non .gov or .edu sites except for maybe one (mine) or at the most a couple, such that the forum is not linking out to bunches of sites outside of the government or university internal network(s)? Would not such a link carry some reasonable authority? And yes, I have after some exhaustive searching found a couple of such sites from which I appear to be the only outsider commenting in the forums and the links work. (all others are internal addresses - I also checked the archived posts)

So have I wasted my time and effort? sheeeesh!

cheers,
Mike

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Hi guys, I have a site with multiple .gov links in, I didnt notice any change in page rank or other SEO benefit when they started linking - Don't forget content is still king!

If you want a quick way to get low quality blog comments on .edu and .gov sites just use search syntax for example:

For .edu you can use the following syntax:

http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&safe...w=1366&bih=600

For .gov you can use the following syntax:

http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&safe...w=1366&bih=600

For .mil you can use the following syntax:

http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&safe...w=1366&bih=600

You really need to play around with the wording to find links, sure enough will this result in high quality links from these sources = NO.

But if you are desperate to have some .edu/.gov/.mil links it can work.

As said the best type of links from these sites is by using great content to attract links within these sites.

Kind Regards,

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Some univeristies have departments that are allowed blogs - they also post study material on line to comment on.

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Hi Mike,

Back to your origional post, I noticed one thing that no-one else has from your comment, the bit about "cc following".

I'm guessing by this you mean domains like someuniversity.edu.cc or governmentsite.edu.cc

If so, I would say yes, it definately would be affected, at least in my experience having tried out links from similar TLD's before. Basically from what I can tell there IS still some benefit in .edu .gov and others like .edu.au and .gov.au, and for other countries like the UK etc. However for some of the more dubious TLD's that don't have strong restrictions on use of these extensions, the links are very low value.

Hope this helps,
Matt

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