Are links from charities really better than 'normal' links.

[isaac663]

Hi Guys.

Just wondering about this idea that links from Charities are particularly good.  I've heard people say that links from .org sites are particularly strong.  But anyone can get a .org domain, it's just that charities tend to use them more often.  Right?

I just don't get the logic. Can anyone give more detail about this?  Is it a myth?  Is there quality info on this topic I can check out?

We're working with several charities at the moment, and they all seem happy to blog and link to us...so I just wanted to know a little more.

Isaac.

[AdamThompson]

I've never seen any evidence that .org links are inherently more valuable than .com or other links. (I've not seen any evidence that .edu links are inherently better, either.)

This post from and this video Matt Cutts seem to imply that the TLD is not a significant factor in ranking.

I think this whole idea that links from certain TLDs (eg .edu) started because people took a true statement (eg "most .edu websites are high authority websites with strong editorial control) and extrapolated that into ".edu links are inherently more authoritative". Mediocre SEO's then latched onto this idea, because they found they could easily get .edu links through blog comments and sell them for a premium by claiming they are more powerful. What you actually had is people building outright spam links and claiming they are great just because they are on an .edu domain.

I analyze .edu and.org links just like I would any other link - relevance, authority of domain, authority of page, editorial strength, etc.

[TheeDigital]

John Mueller actually very recently addressed this as well on the blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html

Basically, all TLDs are treated the same.

[MoosaHemani]

Here is my take on this!

In my personal opinion all TLDs are similar in the eye of Google it’s just that people tend to consider .edu, .gov and .org links more authoritative and link to it naturally as compare to .com and .net domains and which is why special TLDs tend to win the race but this is not always the case.

My advice is to see if the org domain has a good and clean link profile and if they are getting a link from quality sources, then go for it and if not the idea is to pass it like any other non-quality domain you pass.

In my opinion, saying that Google give importance to some domains as compare to others is nothing but a myth.

Hope this helps!