How to Use GSA Search Engine Ranker to Build Only .EDU and .GOV Links

Customers often ask me whether we have a special link list or custom GSA engines just for building .EDU and .GOV links. The answer has always been no. You do not need one. GSA Search Engine Ranker can already do it with a filter that most users never notice.

I found it while helping a customer set up a project, and this guide shows you exactly where it is. I updated it in October 2026, including what Google has actually said about .EDU and .GOV links.

Are .EDU and .GOV links good for SEO?

I never understood why people get so obsessed with .EDU and .GOV links. The idea seems to come from early SEO days, when people assumed that universities and government sites were trusted, so any link from them must be worth more.

Google has said otherwise for a long time. In 2010 Matt Cutts, then head of Google’s webspam team, said: “It’s not like a link from an .edu automatically carries more weight.” Google looks at how reputable and relevant a link is, not at the domain ending.

So a .EDU or .GOV link only helps when it sits on a relevant page. If you drop a casino link on a university page about human anatomy, it will most likely be moderated away, and even if it survives, Google has no reason to give it much weight.

When are .EDU and .GOV links worth building?

• When the page is about a topic related to your site
• When you use them to add variety to your link profile, not as the whole profile
• On lower tiers, where you want links from strong, often-crawled domains pointing at your tier 1

How do you build only .EDU and .GOV links in GSA SER?

Step 1: Build your GSA SER project

Create your project as normal. Select as many platforms as possible, because .EDU and .GOV sites are spread across many engines. If you want, filter out nofollow sites at the same time.

Step 2: Apply the domain filter

1. In the project, open the Options tab.
2. Scroll down almost to the bottom until you see Skip Sites With The Following Words In URL/Domain.
3. Click Create Domain Filter.

A window opens asking What type of filter to use. Choose Must Have Filter. This turns the option around: instead of skipping sites, GSA SER only posts to sites that match.

You now see a list of domain endings (TLDs). Scroll down and select .edu. You can also select .education, which many schools and training sites now use. Then scroll further and select .gov.

Click OK. The option now shows .EDU and .GOV as must-have filters.

That is all there is to it. Your project will now only build links on .EDU and .GOV sites.

Step 3: Give the project enough targets

With this filter on, GSA SER throws away every target that is not .EDU or .GOV, so you need a lot of targets to find enough that match. There are two ways to get them:

• A verified site list: our GSA SER verified link list currently holds 92,393,047 identified URLs, including a large number of .EDU and .GOV sites, and it is updated once a day.
• GSA SER’s own scraping: the built-in search finds targets for you. It works, but it is much slower than a list.

GSA SER does not need a bought list. It scrapes its own targets. A list makes it much faster, which matters a lot with a filter this strict. The video above shows how to enable a site list and the built-in search.

Frequently asked questions

Can GSA SER build only .EDU and .GOV links?

Yes. In the project Options tab, use Create Domain Filter on the option to skip sites with certain words in the URL or domain, choose Must Have Filter, and select the .edu and .gov TLDs. GSA SER will then only post to those sites.

Do .EDU and .GOV links carry more weight with Google?

No, not because of the domain ending. Google has said a link from a .edu site does not automatically carry more weight. What counts is how reputable and relevant the linking page is, so an off-topic .EDU link is worth little.

Do I need a special link list for .EDU and .GOV links?

No. Any large site list works, because the filter picks out the .EDU and .GOV targets. A bigger list simply means more matches. GSA SER can also scrape its own targets, only more slowly.

Why does my .EDU and .GOV project build so few links?

Only a small share of any site list ends in .edu or .gov, and the filter rejects everything else. Give the project a large list, select as many platforms as possible, and expect lower volume than an unfiltered project.

Should I add the .education TLD?

You can. Many schools and training providers now use .education domains. Add it in the same must-have filter if you want more education sites, but remember it is a different TLD from .edu.