<b>Reading the TLD mix for manufactured trust</b>

<b>Reading the TLD mix for manufactured trust</b>

Here's a fast, dirty read on whether a profile was earned or assembled: the spread of donor TLDs tells you who's really linking.

The glance test:
— Earned profiles in most niches carry a healthy share of .gov, .edu, .org and aged country-code domains alongside the .com bulk
— Manufactured profiles are almost pure .com / .net / .info / .xyz — the cheap, registerable-in-bulk extensions
— A sudden cluster of .xyz, .top, .online and brand-new ccTLDs all linking one page is a network signature, not editorial luck

This isn't about TLDs having magic authority — it's that you simply can't buy or spin up .edu and aged .org links at scale, so their presence is a proxy for genuine reach. Multiple grey profiles collapse to a monoculture of cheap TLDs once you group them. The diversity (or its absence) is the tell. Watch this space.