internetheaven - 10:05 am on Dec 16, 2010 (gmt 0)

That kind of contradicts this part of Ted's post: It's the strength of the page itself that gives value to any backlink, not the fact that the TLD is .edu or .gov.

I've been misunderstood then and I can see where my explanation was lacking! ;)

I did not say that Trustrank is applied to tlds. I believe that beyond Pagerank there is Trustrank, and .govs are more likely to have a high Trustrank based on their inbound/internal/outgoing link profile and structure.

The value of this Trustrank is not negligible, but it is certainly not double or triple vs a less trusted site.

For example: example.gov is a PR8 with 5000 backlinks gained over the course of 10 years. example.biz is a PR8 with 5000 backlinks gained over the course of 5 years. Whilst I don't believe age of a link is the only factor in Trustrank, I'm pretty sure that many people will agree with me that in this scenario, a link from the .gov is more valuable, even if only slightly so.

My point wasn't that .govs ARE more valuable: just how that theory/rumour may have come around and how it may be true in some instances as .edu and .govs are often, for example, quite old.

P.S my use of the .biz as an alternative example was not designed to disparage .biz domains! It was to try and set the framework for the original poster and remove delusions about tld strength. I wanted to say that I'd prefer .biz links (something I assumed the original poster would consider worthless considering their current state of mind) over .gov links if the money and/or time involved dictated such was beneficial.