Sweet great find!

Matt Cutts said there were no "Yahoo-boost" or "EDU-boost" in the Google algorithm in December 2005.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-article-in-newsweek/

I don't believe this at all.

There is no boost based on the fact that it's an .edu TLD.

What you must think about is WHAT IS ON EDU TLDs. This is often crusty-old, stable, trusted information that gets lots of link juice from other stable, crusty-old trusted sites. It's just a correlation in the same algorithm that clusters around .edu for normal Google reasons.

I think Scott hit the nail on the head.

In the end, it all comes down to the inherent quality of the website. .edu and .ac.uk domains are likely to be tied by the 'commercial' organisations they can feature on their site, and thus their sites consist mainly of quality content, and links from other Government and public section organisations.

Scott Clark is absolutely right..

Si

That's why the links are valued, not because they are a particular domain, but because of the quality of the site.

In general .edu links may have no additional bonus in google's algorithm but they won't loose their "weight" because usually .edu sites have incoming links from other old and high authority (pr7-9) .edu and other sites which are known for years as non-spammers sites. That's why no matter for a webmaster if google has any bonuses for .edu links themselves beause they have a high authority anyway.

I agree with Scott... it's not just the .edu TDL that matters, it's where the link is actually coming from. Most of us already know that a link from a student blog (even tho it is .edu) has almost no link juice, but to be mentioned on a professor's page as a resource or by the school itself, can be very valuable.

I have to agree with Scott and others. It's not the fact that it has the .edu TLD. It's the fact that probably 99% of the time .edu domains are full of highly trusted information that gets a lot of link juice. They're often old and trusted domains, as well. These factors lead to links from .edu domains being better simply because of all the other algorithmic factors that make .edu's so strong. But, again, I don't think it has anything to do with the mere fact that it's a .edu TLD.

So, sure, the algorithm doesn't favour .edu's specifically, but other algorithmic factors natural tend to make .edu's very strong domains.

This is one of the most talked about issues in SEO and there are several others people who are debating about which links are better. IMO It's the link itself that matters, not the particular TLDs.It just happen that most of the .edu and .gov site has authoritative content but all are still treated the same by the search engines

First of all, why would Google tell us, if it did value .edu or .gov links more? How could they not value these links more? They have to, if Google is anything they are logical, logic says; to have a .edu or .gov domain, you must be a registered educational institution or government agency, this must automatically add value. In addition there may be 100K .edu and .gov domains, when there is what 10 Billion .com and .net domains, no matter what anyone says, this has to prove valuable.

In addition the mere fact that the average .gov and .edu PR is probably PR7-PR8. How can Google not value these domains more if they all have HUGE PR? 50% of all the PR9 websites on the net are either .gov or .edu sites, this clearly shows Google values these sites heavily.

I cant belive that .edu links are not good !!!
.edu is really reaspected by google.

Yeah seriously how is it possible?
Most of the people are literally buying backlinks from .edu domains