So I imagine if that is important in terms of what’s being searched for that Google might give “io” sites a higher position in the SERPs.
You posted “40 links” and you are apparently considering them as SEO.
So I’m guessing these are not links that were earned but links you placed yourself.
If so, they are of little to no value in terms of SEO and indeed may have negative impact.
If these are reputable sites, they will mark user-submitted links as no follow in accordance with Google’s guidelines, so they will have no effect on SEO. Even if this is not the case, links such as these which you place yourself are regarded as virtually worthless by search engines.
As @Gandalf has already said, we’ve explained repeatedly that Google does not favour one domain extension over another. It may use a country-specific domain to determine geographic targeting, but it will not give preference in search results to one extension over others.
In what sense do you consider them “good”? The likelihood is these will be worthless in terms of SEO.
Again, in what sense are they “decent”? Since you consider forum and directory links to be “good”.
The fact they have apparently sprung up overnight for a new site that is currently hard for people to find looks suspicious to me.
Some info on 301s and Page rank:-
It doesn’t make any sense at all to favour one region specific tld over another, except perhaps in the context of a search for local services within that particular region. Hence the question:-
Hint: If the answer is “no”, the .io tld is not relevant.