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.EDU: We Trust You!

Last week, while attending my favorite developer group, the Western MA Developer’s Group, I met someone who works for Smith College. He developed, and manages an application for tracking classroom equipment they use at the school. Just out of curiosity, I asked him if he had ever found any students using pages from the college website to promote spammy stuff. After I asked the question, I remembered that Smith is an all girls college. Not the demographic you think of when you think about black hat spammers :). Anyway, he hadn’t heard of black hat college girls at Smith, and was actually surprised to know that .edu sites could be used for such things.

Well, they can. Just take a look:
Google EDU results

I explained to him how [I think] Google assigns levels of trust to certain sites. For most sites, that trust is only given for a narrow/ targeted subject. For example. This site (seologs.com) can easily rank in Google for a lot of SEO related keywords.

It would be a lot more difficult for me get seologs.com to rank for something non SEO related. And there’s no way I’m going to rank for something like “buy viagra”.

Things are a lot different for .EDU sites. Google just seems to trust them for just about anything. Their reasoning is probably that since only school can register a .edu site, it is less likely to be spam.

Though I’ve had access to a few .edu sites, I’ve never tried getting them to rank in Google myself, but it looks like it’s pretty easy to do. I’m guessing there is a little bit more to it than just the on page stuff, but probably not much more.

For anyone who works at a school, you should probably be aware of this. Maybe you could impress your boss, and get a raise for exposing this stuff.

For students who are currently attending a school that gives you webspace to use, you better get it while the gettin’s good. And remember kids. Always cloak and redirect. It’ll take longer for them to catch you.

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13 Responses to “.EDU: We Trust You!”

  1. perth computer repair guy - Paul Says:
    April 22nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm

    Interesting article, thanks for pointing that out - i had a suspicion edu links were good but wasnt sure - i heard there may have been a post about this by matt cutts recently.. though im not a seo expert so its hard for me to keep up.



  2. Terry Reeves Says:
    April 23rd, 2007 at 12:59 pm

    I recently received a Google news alert from a “seo” blog where I found a post that included a complete explanation about .edu spamming including javascript redirect code examples.

    Personally, I am not willing to risk years of work for the joy of a short lived flow of penis pill traffic. It was tempting though. It is extremely easy to do, if you have the desire to take the risk.



  3. Kana Says:
    April 24th, 2007 at 2:51 am

    Thanks, it is a great post.

    I have donated you by clicking on some ads that I am interested in.

    Kana



  4. Bambarbia Kirkudu Says:
    April 30th, 2007 at 11:59 am

    Very interesting, thanks!
    In Canada, it shows dcsweb.cs.toronto.edu/new/themes/infotheme/p501010104.html
    as first result; and this page redirects to UK via JavaScript:
    function replace(string,text,by) {
    var strLength = string.length, txtLength = text.length;
    if ((strLength == 0) || (txtLength == 0))
    return string;
    var i = string.indexOf(text);
    if ((!i) && (text != string.substring(0,txtLength))) return string;
    if (i == -1) return string;
    var newstr = string.substring(0,i) + by;
    if (i+txtLength

    Our students will kill Goooooooogle the same way as Google killed AltaVista, InfoSeek and many others in 1998!



  5. Hiren Savjiyani Says:
    April 30th, 2007 at 11:51 pm

    Thanks for the post, it explained allot.

    Regards,
    Hiren



  6. Shaun Carter Says:
    May 1st, 2007 at 6:04 am

    Good post. I was wondering how people were capitalizing on the PR benefits of .edu domains.

    Now if only I could start up my own organization of schools so I can register them on my own…



  7. Linux Dedicated Server Says:
    May 8th, 2007 at 4:04 am

    Very helpful article….

    Even i get loads of spam link from .edu pages to my blog every day

    Can we get benefit by posting-replies at such spamed .edu pages with our links.



  8. Articles Mine Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 12:25 pm

    .edu now , so much spamed



  9. Computer Repairs Melbourne Says:
    October 13th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

    Just like the .info sites got spammed all over, .edu will get too.

    After all, all it takes is spammers to realise the possible advantages of having access to an .edu site and they’ll be all over it. But like all good things come to an end, this will too when google realises whats going on and catches up on this.

    Thank you,



  10. eUKhost.com Says:
    January 2nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm

    Due to blatant abuse of .edu and .gov domain websites by spammers, I think Google has now significantly devalued the benefits of backlinks from them. This is to prevent the spammers from gaining any unfair advantages.



  11. Dedicated Says:
    January 12th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

    Thanks for this helpful post.



  12. IT Support , Sydney Says:
    March 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 am

    Never realised that thanks for the info



  13. search engine optimisation Says:
    May 29th, 2008 at 8:46 am

    Great info



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