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Went Hot: April 15, 2008 - 3:04 pm
Posted By: SEOinSeattle 174 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.conversationmarketing.com)
Category: Search Marketing
This takes the cake and IMOH opinionated O is as sleazy as they come. Linkadage is selling .edu subdomains for $50 a month.
"PI.edu is now offering sub-domain blogs that will allow you to educate your potential customers on your field of expertise. Why PI.edu? Our blogs allow you to reach an education minded audience that is difficult to reach with mass market blogs such as Blogger or Blogspot."
Ian goes off and rips someone a new one on Conversation Marketing:
http://tinyurl.com/5uy2us
Also
Linkadage Blog: http://tinyurl.com/5hhy5j
pi.edu Sales Page: http://tinyurl.com/4s83lx
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11 Comments
Comments
I'm pretty sure that due to this, Google will keep a close eye on PI.edu subdomains. May not be such a good idea to get one now.
I suspect so, too. I hope this doesn't lead to blanket reduction in the trust for .edus. But as long as it doesn't go too far we should be OK.
Does anyone think this domain will pass any reasonable PR now after this story broke.
Man, I hope not.
That doesn't look like a real "brick and morter" educational institution. What exactly are the criteria for obtaining an .edu link?
@eric55
You basically need to be an institution accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education's list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies. This isn't restricted to 'brick and morter' educational institutions.
However the rules were a little bit relaxed in the past and most of the 'suspicious' .edu's out there were bought early on. In 2001 they tightened the rules but agreed to let anyone who already held an .edu keep it (grandfathered them).
There doesn't seem to be any continual accreditation needed to keep an .edu. That has led to a few being sold on - packaged with the ownership of the institution/business. I know one guy who bought out one institution solely for this purpose.
I'm sort of surprised that this surprises some people..
People always want links from .edu sources for better ranking, why is this any different than getting students to put links on their .edu websites??
old news - if it was gonna do a reduction in .edu's standings it would have happened a while ago.
go onto sedo on any given day and you can find .edu's up for auction - i have even seen them on ebay.
america.edu being probably one of the most famous.
http://www.america.edu/journals/
looks like they are also jumping on the bandwagon.
They aren't the only ones with fake EDUs.
What a great way to take money from suckers who think there's some special benefit from the search engines using an .edu domain!