If you’re a webmaster interested in obtaining in-pointing links for your web site, you’ve probably heard of the value offered by “.edu”, “.gov” and “.org” links.
The thinking goes like this…
… The “.edu” domains are usually maintained by academic institutions that have a lot of credibility, and therefore garner instant respect with Google. The “.org” domains, maintained by respected organizations and associations, receive the same.
Therefore, obtaining an in-pointing link from such a domain offers much more impact than from a simple “.com” or “.net” domain (“.gov” links, or links from government sites, are also seen as credible and highly valuable). That’s the argument being made by various marketers anyhow – certainly the ones trying to sell you the software that locates the “.gov”, “.edu”, or “.org” links.
But are these links really all they are cracked up to be?
I spent a morning doing some searches for “.edu” blogs targeted to my UltimateFatBurner.com site in an attempt to find some genuine link building opportunities. What I found wasn’t too confidence-inspiring. Here’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, no less (this is not an isolated example, by the way).
This page, which has a Google Page Rank of 2, contains a short post about Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Wasa crackers. Since it’s a blog, people are offered the ability to post their comments. And post their comments they did; I gave up counting after 50 – there’s at least 100 comments here. And almost NONE of them are relevant to the topic at hand - all blatant promotional material with links to various weight loss gadgets, diets and supplements.
Now believe it or not, this is a moderated blog. Yep, someone had to approve each one of these spammy posts (incidentally, the same moderator obviously didn’t see my on-topic comment as being particularly flattering towards Oprah, and rejected it).
Now frankly, I don’t care what the gurus say…
Google is not going to arbitrarily assign a lot of weight to a link from an “.edu.” page simply because it resides on an “.edu” page.
It simply doesn’t make any sense.
First…
I’m not a programmer or a techie, but I can think of a dozen ways to program a spider to flag link spam, regardless of the domain of origin. It would be programming child’s play to identify the responses to the above posts as self serving link spam, and down-grade their importance accordingly.
Do you really think Google has programmed its spider to ignore blatant spam “flags” as soon as it visits a “.edu”, “.gov”, or “.org” domain?
Regardless of whether or not domains hosted on these extensions tend to deliver greater value on a whole than their “.com” and “.net” counterparts, it doesn’t make sense to believe so.
Secondly…
In the face of the example above (again, not an isolated example) you simply cannot argue that all domains with the .edu, .org, and .gov extension always post high quality material. Obviously, they do not (there’s nothing wrong with the post itself, of course, but 99% of the comments should not have seen the light of day). And if that’s the case, it’s tough to argue that Google arbitrarily assigns a ton of link credibility to any and all links from these domain extensions.
Bottom line?
You can bet your bottom dollar Google is well aware that marketers are trying to capitalize on the authority of these “respected domains” and has tweaked their algorithyms to adjust for it.
To argue this is both counter-intuitive, and reflective of an ulterior motive (i.e., the selling or promotion of a product that locates such links).
At the end of the day, I have a tough time seeing how a post on this particular blog would provide any link value to any web site. And if it does, you can bet it won’t do so for long.
Of course, genuine, quality links will still count. As they always have. From any domain extension.
But as far as obtaining a handful of .edu, .gov. or .org links as the solution to your link-building woes, forget about it. Worthwhile ones are going to be really tough to get, since you will need to contribute something of exceptional quality for the moderator to approve your comment.
And the easy ones?
Google will effortlessly identify them as link spam, and penalize them accordingly.
In the end, I have this advice…
If a link is incredibly easy to obtain, it’s usually worth very little. Webmasters and moderators of quality resources (regardless of the domain extension) know what they have, and are not going to jeopardize their site’s integrity and credibility by posting off-topic comments with spammy links.
Link building is hard, tedious work. There’s no way around it. There’s just no easy way to obtain worthwhile, high-authority in-pointing links.
I rest my case.
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- Link Building Strategies: How To Find Theme Related Blogs
- Linking Fundamentals: Why Is Linking Important?
- Take A Link Building Chill Pill: Make Haste Slowly With Your Link Building Efforts
- Experimenting With The Directory Maximizer Directory Submission Service
I have heard the the edu, org, and gov links are worth hundred times a typical link from low page rank link. Though, I agree with your comment:
“Do you really think Google has programmed its spider to ignore blatant spam “flags” as soon as it visits a “.edu”, “.gov”, or “.org” domain?”
If my Askimet WP plugin can catch the spammy posts, you would expect that Google spiders would be better. None the less, with all the hype, I still try to get the edu, gov and org links. The key is to always add value to your comments. Thank you for your No-BS approach. Appreciated.