The whois reveals it is owned by "INSTITUTE DEVELOPMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY" (1 Google result). Archive.org tells me that it used to be the website of "Institute of Developmental Anthropology" (4 Google results)

I don't see anything on the official .edu website (educause.edu/edudomain/policy. ...) against advertising, but I would think this would be an abuse of the domain name. Should I bring this up with them?

How does one register a .edu domain anyway?

Answered my own question by clicking on the link above. To solve the mystery of America.edu (as currently only accredited schools can get .edu domains), check this:

According to the Cooperative Agreement between EDUCAUSE and the U.S. Department of Commerce, all .edu names in existence as of October 29, 2001, are "grandfathered." This means that everyone who already had a .edu name by that date (October 29, 2001), regardless of current or past eligibility requirements, is allowed to keep those .edu names.

America.edu was likely registered fraudulently by an unqualified candidate (when .edu was still administered by the previous registry – pre-Educause).

Due to the "grandfather clause" for pre-Educause registrations, Educause likely hasn't considered revoking the registration.

A site-query shows that America.edu is not in the Google Index. A few hundred pages are indexed by Yahoo and MSN ...

I think that's exactly it. .EDU domains are only good, because of the quality of their backlinks and content. I'm pretty sure that Google doesn't treat them any different from other domains that use .COM, .NET or .ORG. Now Wikipedia is a different story ;)

----- Google ranking C++ module -----
....

/* quick fix until we figure out a way to scale it. – MattC. */
if (domainName.stringPos('wikipedia') >= 1) {
   pageRank += 2;
}

....

Given how many links taht Wikipedia captures (arguably rightfully so), I doubt that "PageRank Boost hack" is needed any more. Have you asked Matt to so a s/wikipedia/blogoscoped/ ... ;-)

When you can't get something in life, it looks like fraud when someone else owns it. Someone is just overly jealous.

thanks,
Diana.
.

I too don't see anything wrong with the domain America.edu. May be they are planning to build the site as I saw a press release looking for a partner.

With quick google search for "america.edu" I see this link "America.edu is seeking partner from India" andhranews.net/Business/2007/A ... .

so guys dont need to think its a scam.

Oh well, here goes;
America.edu seems to be developed and it looks awesome if I might add.
I'm sure google will take this into account.
I looked back at the archive.org captures, and it seems like america.edu had undergone a server change just a few months ago and was an auto generated site. A lot of webmasters install a script that randomly generates related content for a name parked on their server. Like when you park a name at sedo ect.

Does not take a rocket scientist to figure this out guys, come on, take those sticks out your behinds and smell the fresh beef stew ok? Thanks ;)