Competitive .edu Research via Open Site Explorer

[MichealGooden]

I was using open site explorer and trying to figure out how my competitors are getting so many .edu links.  Now I won't mention any names here but I am trying to figure out why almost all their links point to downloads of documents.  Here are a few of the examples of sites I keep finding...

www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/paracomp/tau/monitor/sheehan_examples/tim_context_xmpl?wiki=TailleMaximaleDesFichiersSurUnePartition/orphan

www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/mathias/video/090926_wima_klimawandel.ivr?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=American Journal Clinical Nutrition&rft.atitle=Problems with red meat in the WCRF2&rft.volume=89&rft.spage=1274&rft.epage=9&rft.date=2009&rft.aulast=Truswell&rft.aufirst=AS&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiley.com%3AOnlineLibrary

faculty.unlv.edu/jensen/CEE_468/GISTutorialWorkbook/tutorial11/LandUsePgh.lpk?arrow=nws&read=24922

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[iAnalyst.com]

I like the opensiteexplorer method. The difficulty is what to do once you create the list of .edu's. We're using some of the other blogs on the subject on seomoz.

[carinoverturf]

Hey John,We have made some updates to our crawling so it will go deeper into sites, and this is the first launch including the new metrics. We've discovered a bug, however, in the updated crawler. The first issue is the crawler is counting a binary file as a link, but the larger issue, is that the crawler doesn’t really know how to handle these types of files. This bug is causing some links to be improperly associated with certain domains. This is probably why you’re seeing your competitor have these .edu links - they're probably incorrectly associated with their site.
There are two steps to addressing this issue: changing how the crawler sees these file types and then fixing how the crawler handles these file types. We have made improvements to our algorithm so that we will be able to handle the majority of these files correctly, however, this update will need about a month to propagate. The fix for this issue probably won’t be seen for two more updates, meaning late September. Our improvements should catch most of the issues, but there still could be a few cases we haven't addressed. If this happens, don't hesitate to let us know; we love feedback since it helps us improve and make our index even better!

The next step is to fix how our crawlers handle binary file links and prevent them from being improperly associated with certain domains. We are in the process of working through that issue right now. We’re doing everything we can to resolve this bug as we know it is alarming to see these “questionable” links associated to either your site or your competitors sites.

I hope this helps answer your questions around these .edu links, but let me know if you have any more questions!

Thanks,
Carin

[KeriMorgret]

Hi John,

I think you might be seeing a known bug in OSE about links coming from documents. I'm going to ask one of the Linkscape people to come in and comment, but these might not be real links.

[JamesNorquay]

hi,

It seems the competition is just syndicating documents via education facilities to acquire links. to be honest links on low end tutorial sections where documents can be syndicated are not that great, they will hold some value yet it will not be that strong. I have seen this with competitors it is the same as paying off students to make blogs on edu blogs about your brand their are soo many un ethical things in the market which I wouldn't advise people to do ever.

You can be smart about it and acquire far better links for example if you do free work for a uni or you sponsor a university event, you just need to brain storm quality ways to achieve links on edu sites.

Regards