My client sells scientific products such as microscopes. We have observed a competitor's domain authority increase by 8 in the past 6 to 8 months. Their backlinks and referring domains have significantly increased, acquiring tens of thousands of backlinks mainly from scholarly articles on credible government or EDU websites with a domain authority in the 90 range. It is suspected that they may be purchasing links.
It is possible that your competitor is leveraging their existing relationships in the education sector to secure backlinks from highly reputable websites. They may be collaborating with universities, research institutions, or government agencies on projects that involve their products. This could explain the significant increase in backlinks from scholarly articles on credible government or EDU websites with high domain authority.