Devalu.edu

In the next move destined to manipulate and eventually devalue what was once a noble concept, the SEO community has begun to latch onto job boards on .EDU websites.

EXPLANATION FOR NON-SEOS: The .EDU top-level domain is reserved for educational institutions. Since educational institutions are widely believed to be held to high standards, there is a widely held belief among the SEO community that Google provides a “ranking boost” known as TrustRank to web pages which acquire hyperlinks from .EDU websites to said pages.

EXPLANATION FOR SEOS: I will be explaining many low-level concepts in detail to ensure that the non-SEOs can understand the concept; I am specifically targeting the educational institutions that are targeted by this activity. So please bear with me as I explain concepts that many of you would consider second nature. Thanks.

Explanation of the SEO Manipulation

Full details of the manipulation can be found at this blog post from Joe Whyte. For those who don’t wish to read the whole post, the summary version for SEOs is as follows:

• Think of an SEO or SEM “job” that a university student could do without a lot of formal training. This usually involves some remedial task such as blogging for the sake of creating blog hyperlinks, or “link building” by “submitting to 1,000,000 search engines and directories.”
• Find a university job board that provides hyperlinks to employer websites that don’t include the rel=”nofollow” attribute. rel=”nofollow” is a microformat which can be added to a hyperlink and is designed to tell crawlers not to traverse said hyperlink. For example, I have added the rel=”nofollow” microformat to the Hybrid SEM link above to let search engine spiders know not to traverse it and that I do not endorse its content; the hyperlink is provided for informational purposes only.
• Post your “job ad” and watch as your search engine rankings rise.

In this example job post, Joe Whyte is apparently “looking” for a “Senior Blogger” (more on the title to follow).

Why SEO Job Posting on .EDU Websites (or any other job sites) is Wrong

Posts are Created for SEO Reasons

A direct quote from the blog post above:

As you can see my url is currently listed on the site and is relevant to the job searchers. See my link on this page. Make sure you check this pages source code out. You will notice a nice friendly SEO link in the source code.

Translation: the link doesn’t include the rel=”nofollow” microformat, so it qualifies as a trustworthy link to search engines.

Other quotes that imply that the technique is clearly intended for SEO:

It is safe to say that a .edu is a power link and can do a lot for your site within the search engines.

This is why services like text link brokers actually sell text link ads on .edus and you might have heard of .edu link campaigns where link developers aquire links on .edus by way of a presale page or purchasing a student page and placing a link on it.

Preying on the Uninformed, Naive and Vulnerable

At the risk of offending students and practitioners of higher learning, a large percentage of people who are “book smart” aren’t always “street smart” and do not have the experience, knowledge, and/or critical thinking ability to be able to determine a legitimate job offer as opposed to one that is less than above board.

In addition to this, many post-secondary students have very little money and very few job prospects, due to educational demands on their schedules and bank accounts. This can lead to desperation and the consideration of job opportunities that might not have otherwise merited a second look.

This is where a phrase such as “Senior Blogger” to describe the job opportunity can hold an increased appeal. There is no delineation between a Senior, Junior, Entry-Level, Executive, or any other type of Blogger. Bloggers are just that…bloggers. However, the inclusion of the word “Senior” in the job title gives the job a certain appearance of additional prestige that it may not have otherwise acquired.

In addition, blogging “jobs” tend to be rather low-paying and are quite often paid on a piecework basis. A student working through deadlines and dealing with other time restrictions probably would not be able to afford the time required to put together an effort sufficient enough to earn any amount of significance.

“It’s 100% Ethical”

When the creator of a concept has to reinforce the idea that the concept is ethical, the opposite is usually true.

How Can This Be Stopped?

There are two parties that have the ability to control this situation before it becomes a serious problem: the major search engines (particularly Google), and the webmasters of the .EDU domains/sites.

The Major Search Engines

Although Google is the primary target of this particular SEO manipulation, the other engines would be well-advised to implement the same idea, as they may end up being the next to be targeted.

As Joe Whyte points out, there is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest that Google gives a certain ranking boost to .edu sites. Searching for “Cialis on Google reveals the presence of .EDU links on either the first, second, or third pages (depending upon various Google factors).

Further searches of .EDU domains reveal that .EDU domains contain a large number of pages which have been created strictly for deceitful marketing purposes:

Levitra (Google). Many of the first page results contain redirects to other websites, among other shady tactics.

Phentermine (Yahoo! Canada). The webmaster(s) for phentermine.skyhaifa.com is/are using at least two .edu domains to promote the site.

HGH (MSN). Like the phentermine.skyhaifa.com webmaster(s), the thumbset.net webmaster(s) is/are using multiple .edu domains to promote the site.

In addition to the individual problems listed with the three queries above,
It is apparent from these searches (and a number of others) that .EDU domains can no longer be held to a higher standard than non-educational domains. .EDU domains are plagued with the same issues as non-EDU domains. The argument could be made that these problems occur on a much larger scale and with a greater degree of frequency, at least partly due to perceived SEO benefits of inbound links from .EDU domains; the approximate volume of results from the three queries above (in all three cases, approx. 1,000,000 or greater) provides some evidence to support this theory.

In order to minimize the problems created by SEO manipulation, search engines must first minimize the potential impact caused by said manipulation. In this particular instance, search engines must treat hyperlinks from .EDU web pages in the same manner and hold them to the same standards as non-.EDU web pages. In other words, search engines should treat .EDU web pages as they would web pages from any other TLDs.

Educational Institutions

While it would appear that educational institutions are making at least some progress in terms of combating spam on their domains, as is evidenced by the number of dead links and links that redirect to educational institution home pages in the three searches listed above, the problem of widespread SEO and spam manipulation still exists. Increased vigilance and additional efforts are required on the part of said educational institutions.

Step 1: Adopt Common Web Hosting Standards and Enforce Them

While students and others should be free to express themselves as they see fit, institutions of higher learning should also be permitted to implement their own standards for hosting content provided by students in order to minimize the potential for server abuse and misappropriation.

The Acceptable Use Policy provided by the host for this blog should provide a framework that can be adjusted to meet the needs of most educational institutions, although the penalties for violating the Acceptable Use Policy would need to be adjusted somewhat.

Step 2: Automatically Check for Violations Regularly

Tools such as the Google API can be used to automatically query major search engines for potential violations of an Acceptable Use Policy.

Entrepreneurial computer programming teachers and professors can also create a course assignment; students can be given the task of attempting to detect spam across educational institution websites, which can then be removed.

Step 3: Implement Harsh, Yet Enforceable Penalties for Server Misuse

Holding students accountable for their actions by suspension or expulsion from academic institutions as the result of misuse of server resources will provide at least a partial deterrent.

Step 4: Automatically Add rel=”nofollow” to All Outbound Links

Educational institutions which allow students to create and edit pages via CMSes or other similar interfaces will be able to automatically add rel=”nofollow” to all links that point to other sites. Educational institutions which allow students to upload content via FTP should consider disabling the protocol.

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