Most search engine optimizers agree that .edu and .gov sites carry a lot of weight when it comes to link value. Presumably, sites, as well as links from, either domain extension tend to be pretty authoritative. If you look up a site on breast cancer, its probably going to be pretty acurate.

Today I ran into a story about a Northwestern University professor who told an Iranian newspaper that the Holocaust didn’t happen.

This was the part of the article that caught my eye:

Butz, a tenured Northwestern professor since 1974, is known for denying that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during World War II. He promotes his views through his Northwestern-affiliated Web site, including a link to his 1976 book, “The Hoax of the 20th Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry.”

I did a search and quickly found his site, yes, on a .edu: http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/

If someone who denies the Holocaust happened can get a page on a .edu site, theres a pretty strong chance that you can get .edu links to your commercial site, and get away with it. In fact, Jim Boykin often talks about getting .edu links on his blog.