.edu Backlinks? Sounds like rubbish to me…

I’ve seen loads on the internet in my most recent travels about the brilliance of ‘.edu backlinks’ because Google values them as “Trusted Sources”

Is there actually any truth in this, or is it another marketing scam? I was pretty sure that Google ranked stuff by it’s pagerank, not by how cool it’s extension is? Is it really true, or is it someone making something up to get traffic to their ‘brand new, never seen before tutorial’ ?

I’d appreciate any comments on this matter, because it seems like a lot of rubbish to me, and I can’t understand why Google would care what the TLD is ;)

Admittedly, it seems that I’m wrong, and I’m not even entirely sure why, because from what I knew, Google ranked by pagerank, not extension, right?

I’ve found some pretty good PR5 .edu backlinks, if anyone is really interested in having a copy, let me know (drop me a comment) and I’ll email you them :)

~George