A post over at Andy Beal's blog reminds me that I should be reading Eric Ward's blog on a regular basis. Thankfully he did and I do and now I can share a link to a great article that explains what the deal is with .edu links.

From the post:

One of the bigger link building hot topics is the impact that IBL (inbound links) originating from .edu locations can have on your link popularity and search rankings. What most people don't fully grasp is that the quality of IBL's from within the .edu domain varies significantly.

Rather than making this concept more complex than it needs to be, let's boil it down by example. A link from a student homepage or school paper web site isn't as valuable as a link from a professor's page, or better yet, the University library site. Why? because it's easy for those who are into black hat stuff to buy links from students, wheras a librarian isn't likely to be bought. Thus the content EARNED the link, and the source and reference can be trusted. Engines know this and will tweak algos until they get it right. I hope, anyway. Give me 10 library links instead of 100 student page links any day.

Eric goes on to point out an important concept that's often overlooked...it's the specifics, not the generalities that are important. Thus, it's not just about getting a link from a .edu site, it's about getting a GOOD link from a .edu site.

Read Eric's full post for all the goods.