Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is Spam Score?
-
DA, PA, I knows it. But what is Spam Score? How does it work? For example in my website: tructiepbongda, the score is 3%. So is this factor evaluated by GG in terms of rankings? How to control this indicator well?
Thanks! -
Thanks!
This answer was very helpful to me
-
Hey there! Thanks for writing in!
Spam Score in Links and Link Explorer represents the percentage of sites with similar features we've found to be penalized or banned by Google. Our machine learning model identified 27 common features among the millions of banned or penalized sites in the data we fed it.
You can read more about Spam Score on our Help Hub - including an awesome video that explains how to use the score as well as the factors we use to calculate the score.
Your Spam Score - This does not mean that your site is definitely spammy. The percentage represents a wide variety of potential signals ranging from content concerns to low authority metrics. Since this is based on correlation with penalization, rather than causation, the solution isn't necessarily to change these factors on your site, but it may be worthwhile to consider them. It is best to use this percentage figure to judge the quality of inbound links to your site, giving you a signal to help you determine which of those links needs some further investigation and, perhaps, even removal.
Another site's Spam Score - Again, this doesn't mean that these sites are spammy. This percentage represents a wide variety of potential signals ranging from content concerns to low authority metrics. Since this is just based on correlation with penalization, rather than causation, the solution isn't necessarily to disregard sites or disavow links with higher Spam Scores. Instead, we'd recommend using it as a guide for kick starting investigations. Be sure to check out a site's content and its relevance in linking back to you before disregarding or disavowing.
You can read more about Link Explorer metrics here https://moz.com/help/link-explorer
P.S. 3% is extremely low!
Feel free to reach out to help@moz.com with any further questions,
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How is Moz DA affected by spam links? Disavow file?
So it does not appear that moz let's you upload your disavow file. So when moz calculates your DA how do spammy links factor in? After digging through our GA it appears our site was hit with the 2016 penguin update and never recovered. Our weekly visitors were 2k, then dropped to 500 and have stayed close to that level for a while. We've used the disavow tool, without success over the past 3 years. During that time we have done link out reach and built around 10 legit good quality DA links since. But we have not recovered. At this point i'm thinking I should just remove the disavow file. Moz says our spam score for our domain is 5%.
Link Explorer | | jessicapremier0 -
Spam links and Domain Authority
I have a site that I know was Domain Authority 35 but now Domain Authority 25 after someone sent a load of spam links to it, how can this be correct and how can I change it? Is it worth doing a disavow and will moz take that into account?
Link Explorer | | BobAnderson0 -
How can i reduce spam score
my website is activate in egg incubation industry https://chicken-device.ir . Level of this site spam score is 19% . now how can i reduce that ?
Link Explorer | | HeidiMaryAyuningtyas0 -
Moz's new Link Explorer, including our revamped index and DA/PA scores is now open to everyone!
Hey Moz Community, Link Explorer is now open to the public! Everyone can access it via a subscription or a free Moz ‘Community’ account. As you may know by now, the brand-new Link Explorer tool is primed to replace Open Site Explorer as Moz’s link building and analysis tool. The Link Explorer project is the result of an incredible amount of perseverance and hard work by the team, and we’re proud to be able to finally share it with you — we know it’s going to revolutionize how you approach link building and make your job easier. You can read more about the tool here in Sarah Bird’s announcement post. Because Link Explorer improves on almost every aspect of Open Site Explorer, the metrics have improved, too. That means you’re likely going to see some Domain Authority and Page Authority discrepancies between OSE’s index and Link Explorer’s index. We definitely suggest you use the new DA/PA from Link Explorer, as they’re more accurate and refresh daily rather than monthly, as was the case with OSE’s index. However, we also realize that many of you use these metrics to report to your clients and colleagues, and a sudden change or fluctuation could potentially make your job harder. Which DA is the real DA? The new DA is based on a much larger index that has many improvements, several of which are designed to make the index more like Google’s than ever before. You should consider moving towards the new DA (and the old DA won’t be updated after April 26th 2018, so the sooner the better). While there will be fluctuations as we improve the model and add features to the index, we expect it to remain largely stable and to be a far more accurate picture of a site’s authority according to how it’s seen by Google. Why is Link Explorer’s DA/PA considered better than OSE’s, and which should I trust? The larger link index with improved crawl selection allows us to produce a stronger model that includes a much larger proportion of the web. That being said, DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Is Domain Authority/Page Authority an absolute score or a relative one? Both DA and PA are relative to the Internet as a whole. If Facebook acquired a billion new links, everyone’s PA and DA would drop relative to Facebook. Because of this, it’s always best to look at PA and DA in comparison to your competitors. What does a drop/raise in DA mean in Link Explorer vs OSE? How can I explain this to my clients when I’m reporting it? DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop or raise in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Reporting that your site has moved from a DA of 45 to a DA of 42 doesn’t tell the whole story, but reporting that your site has a DA of 42 while your main competitor moved from a 43 to a 37 shows that, relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs, your site has significantly more authority and ranking power. What’s happening to MozTrust and MozRank and why, and what should I replace those with? The improvements to our DA/PA and Spam Score metrics now now account for more important nuances in helping you determine one site’s ability to rank higher than another. Because they no longer correlate with Google’s ranking model as well as they used to, MozRank and MozTrust are being deprecated for better metrics. Users should rely on Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score to determine the importance and quality of pages, domains, and links. I have historical data I use to help my clients benchmark their progress. What do I do now that DA is calculated differently? You should annotate any KPI changes referencing the change in DA and PA. However, most importantly, you should compare those changes to your competitors, as this will best show how strong your site’s authority is relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs. We take updating our metrics very seriously, and our last major update to the model was 7 years ago. Users of Domain Authority and Page Authority can expect us to continue to produce steady, reliable metrics for the long haul, and only make changes to these metrics when we believe the benefits dramatically outweigh the stability of the metric. Do you have any questions about the new metrics? Anticipating a tough time reporting changes to clients or bosses? Metrics, features or functionality missing that you would want to see? Let us know in the thread, and we’ll work to find a good answer for you. Hope you enjoy the new Link Explorer product and the amazing new link index powering it. We are very excited to provide this valuable data to our community and customers.
Link Explorer | | IanWatson9 -
Spam Score and crawling of my site
Hello, I'm trying to analyze the spam score of my site which is 9/17 Actually I have few backlinks and all of them have a low spam score (max 4/17, just one). I think there's some kind of issue with the crawler since I get strange spam factors: Large Site with Few Links (likely true, I recently deleted a lot of tags used once) Low Number of Pages Found (wasn't it a "Large Site"??) Low Number of Internal Links (I got a considerable number) No Contact Info (I have a link to my facebook in the menu and a "contacts" page) Thin Content (It's just a blog with min 300 words per post, why thin?) Site Link Diversity is Low (likely true) Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Subdomains (likely true) Low MozTrust or MozRank Score (true) Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Domains (likely true) Can you please help me to understand it, is it a crawling problem or similar? If needed I will post the url of the website. Thank you so much Marco
Link Explorer | | MarcoBP0 -
How does spammy linked site have zero spam score?
I came across a law firm site with hundreds of horrible spam links to it. Of the 3330 links, all but 231 links have anchor text that has to do with "jordan 11s for sale". I'm trying to see how useful the moz spam score is, but clearly it's not reliable if this site has a score of zero. Many of the obviously spammy sites linking to it also have low to zero spam scores, although there are plenty in the 5-10 range. (see attached image). I also noticed that many sites were legit sites, but if you look at the source code, there's tons of hidden spam links in the code (e.g., www.chickasawgardens.net) Why would this site have a zero spam score? If you're curious, put it into open site explorer and have a look. It's a law firm based in Pennsylvania, most anchor text has to do with jordan sneakers and most links are foreign: penn-criminallawyers.com Is the spam score too lenient? Is the moz tool unable to find spam links coming from legitimate sites with hidden spam links? DrokMbP
Link Explorer | | usDragons0 -
Not existing domains linking to my website (spam)
Hello, When i run my platform www.taobao.nl through https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/ i see a lot of nasty adult domains that link to my platform. These give a very negative (spam)score to my platform. I already disavowed quite a few via Webmastertools, but they keep coming. When i check the names in the Whois, they don't even seem to exist! (anymore) What could cause this and how can i end it?? Thanks for your help! Sander
Link Explorer | | benhond1