"and considering how many we have it's amazing our rankings aren't better"

I think you may be in the wrong mindset in all this

Remember that Google determines the quality of the backlink from the quality of the site. That can be determined to the reputation of the entire site or the page itself. Just look at JC Penny and it's faults. They are a VERY reputable company and they still screwed up.

Honestly whether it's a .edu, .gov or whatever else it may be coming from Google doesn't care, it only cares about the quality.

Just because you have a ton of links from a .edu really doesn't mean jack squat (TBH).

My .edu links never show up in my Google Webmaster Tools

Who knows, that could be for many reasons, it does not necessarily mean that Google does not already know about them and are not considering them.

Hope that helps

thanks man

Correct, they are not indexed and they are by far spam just looking at them. Here is an example of one

http://beach.speedy.ch/joomdocs/FREE-SCRABBLE-DICTIONARY.htm

I know its spammy, I was just wondering what others thought

Would you count them as spammy and disavow?

That is a question that no one here can answer. We cant speak for how Google does things internally.

but.... as a web / database programmer for 14+ years let me tell you how its "generally" done

Usually when you have to link to separate sets of data together (ie. database or tables) there is usually a unique_id created to link them which usually is never changed. So when a new record is created that record will live with that ID for its life, also known as a (unique identifier which tends to be an auto-incremented number that is dynamically generated and can not be repeated).

Since records tend to be linked this way, any other fields that exist in the record (firstName, lastName, Url, blah blah) then can be changed without the original ID being disturbed.

So to answer your question from my experience I would assume Google links from a unique identifier of some sort and not the URL directly.

Hope I didn't lose you, its my favorite subject...but no one here speaks that language to much

Wow you just asked questions that would require about 10,000,000,000 answers

Lets start here

1. Video from the man himself Mr. Matt Cutts - Matt Cutts (Works for Google)
2. Great Web 2.0 Page create from Google themself - (Google Them self)
3. Older but still relevant description about how "backlinks" affect PR - (Google Them self)