.com and .edu difference

[Cornel_Ilea]

Hello,

Can anyone tell me how big is the difference between a PR5 .com and a PR5 .edu

Double, triple? How big?

Cornel

[BenRWoodard]

You know, Rand just spoke about this in a WBF recently but I can't seem to remember which one.  He said that based on current research the connection between .EDU and authority in Google's eyes is based on content not a causation of the .EDU domain name.  It's weight is determined by that site's content and links just like every other TLD.

Since PR has many different variables I would recommend taking the site as is and not trying to ascribe a certain authority based on PR or .edu domain name.

Run it through OSE and compare it to other similar sites then run some organic searches for keywords you know it is ranking for.

[Adam.Whittles]

It would be very hard for anyone, other than those in the know at Google, to assign a value to this.

On the face of it, you would have to say that the .edu link would be more valuable considering what we know about Google assigning more value and trust to .edu sites but that's not to say all .edu links are way more valuable than a .com.

First, check both the .com and .edu in open site explorer to gain an indication of authority from SEOmoz's domain authority metric. You then have to assign your own value to the link in terms of relevance. Is the .com link more relevant to your site? If so, then it may actually be more valuable to you than the .edu link.

[Highland]

I've been hearing this for years and it's always the same thing: Google likes .edu but not because it's .edu. EDU sites are typically major link bait in of themselves and they also don't link to other sites on a whim. As a result, they wind up with high site popularity and great link juice.