Does .edu Matter?

If you have been involved in the search  industry, you have probably heard about the importance of getting links from .edu and .gov domains. Those domains are supposedly more trusted by Google and can bring credibility to your sites. Not only that, if you can get your hands on one of these domains, you have a better chance of getting ranked higher on Google. But should that really be the case? Aaron Wall has an interesting take on this whole issue, but I am going to take this one step further. What makes .edu domains so special?

I am a big believer in meritocracy. It’s true that not everyone can get their hands on these .edu domains but what makes these special anyway? I get the whole .gov thing. If the government has something to say about some issue, it is probably relevant to your search. But I have seen .edu sites getting ranked high for their junk content too many times. I get that Google is trying its best to bring relevant results to searchers. But let’s be reasonable here. You can’t give these .edu sites a free pass just because they have a certain domain extension. If you do, you are underestimating the talent of mankind in developing junk content. Creating valuable content is not easy and can be time-consuming. Developing crap? Now that can be done fast, and we have an abundance of junk on the WWW these days. It doesn’t matter whether you are a .com or .edu domain owner. Anybody can create garbage.

Your take: should .edu sites get special treatment from Google? How about .gov domains?