There are link sources that pretty much every website owner would like to use. For example, a link from Wikipedia is always welcome. But also EDU links have always been considered particularly strong. However, that this is a misconception, now John Mueller explained on Twitter. He wrote that EDU links not only bring not more than others, but are even ignored by Google. So it does not take much to focus on these links.

EDU links are top-level domains that have been used since 2001 exclusively by higher education institutions. As a user, it can therefore be assumed that websites with the .edu extension are trustworthy. Of course, Google also assumes that and so it comes close to the assumption that links from such sites are also weighted higher, creating more trust. At first that was certainly the case. However, as is often the case, it was exaggerated by SEOs and link-spamming was the result. This has also been noticed by Google and responds with the ignoring of EDU links.

This statement was made by John Mueller, Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google, for a request on Twitter. He also said that it’s even better to put EDU links on NoFollow right away, so that it does not even come out that Google has to ignore them. This makes them worthless to most SEOs, even though the links generally speak for the site. However, they do not have much influence – and that should be surprising for many website operators.
Even though it is not advised to buy links from all sides and no one really admits to doing that, .edu links always acted well and could cost a lot of money. However, this source of income is now eliminated because the news that the links have no effect, will probably spread quickly. But fortunately there are also other high-quality link sources that really offer added value.