Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Moz Tools
    3. Moz Bar
    4. How Much Time It Will Take To Lower the Spam Score?

    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.

    How Much Time It Will Take To Lower the Spam Score?

    Moz Bar
    5
    5
    2871
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • rajas2019
      rajas2019 last edited by

      I'm facing an issue with my website. Due to little to no knowledge about link building and backlink, i created backlinks without checking the quality and spam score of the sites. Now there are many sites linking to my website but the overall spam score is very high of my website and my domain is reviewheart.com that i'm talking about. I have created a list and disavowed all he poor linking domains but still no improvement shown. Can anyone have the idea how much time moz will take to show the updated spam score as i have disavowed all the low quality spammed linking site?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • NadiaEira00
        NadiaEira00 last edited by

        I also have the same question. But now I can't see my Spam Core in my cookie clicker 2 website.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • sarahwalsh
          sarahwalsh last edited by

          You have to work hard on improving your organic SEO, by removing anything that could be deemed as spam / or low quality seo- for example if you have spam backlinks these should be removed by your seo agency. Your web designers, should also only add high quality, well written text.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • effectdigital
            effectdigital last edited by

            If you're talking about the Moz spam score of the domain, it's higher than many would like but it's not extremely high:

            https://d.pr/i/4WwfDq.png (screenshot)

            A score of 80 or higher is indicative of very, very spammy sites. Although lots of strong language is used within the tool, 50% isn't super awful really. By the way, Moz is not connected to your disavow file and cannot see it (something many have requested many times, which I continue to request at any given opportunity). As such, disavow work will not decrease your Moz spam score

            Moz's spam score is not something which Google use within their ranking algorithm(s). Google have private spam metrics which they do not share with webmasters. Moz's spam score is simply an attempt by our industry to make our 'best guess' at how spammy Google 'might' think a website is. Ultimately though, it's just an indicator and a 'shadow metric', it's meant to mimic the decisions that Google might make but Google (again) does not actually use any Moz metrics (at all) within their ranking algorithm(s)

            Your disavow file goes straight to Google, so even if Moz doesn't see it and their best 'guess' is that your spam score is still high, you know that 'actual Google' have seen your disavow work and thus Moz's spam metric is not likely to be accurate for your domain (which is why it's only an indicator, even when looking at other domains, as you don't know what link removal and disavow work they have carried out)

            If you want your actual Moz spam score to go down (though there is no reason for such vanity, as Google doesn't use Moz metrics) then you have to actually remove the links and that's that (sorry)

            Remember that the spam score is derived based on factors which Moz perceives as being common to penalised websites:

            Spam Score: "Represents the percentage of sites with similar features we've found to be penalized or banned by Google." ~ Moz

            This is not necessarily linked to backlink features in isolation, I would expect that some on-page features may be counted. The site just doesn't look and feel very legit:

            1.) A review site, with only seven reviews, one of which appears to be for a gun or fire-arm (paintball or not, it's a gun)

            2.) No seeming ability for any users to add their own reviews, so this is just one person's biased voice. Why does the internet need this website?

            3.) Logo is blurry and low-res and doesn't look 'proper'

            4.) Only three pages seem to exist. One of these pages is a 'disclaimer'. Webmasters put up disclaimers when, they should be taking more responsibility for the content of their own website but they refuse to do so. Disclaimers are a low-quality signal, and unless there are thousands of contradictory positive signals (which there are not, for this domain) then this is how this will be viewed

            5.) The site has no value-add for end-users, or unique value-proposition. People can find more in-depth reviews from product critics they trust, or shallow yet more numerous reviews from review aggregators like Trust Pilot. Either way, they would be on a better site with a better value-proposition for the end user. Why would Google rank this site?

            6.) Site claims to be a review site, yet does not make good usage of review schema and star-ratings for prettier SERPs. Seems more like a blog with aspirations to be a review site, which didn't quite make it. The site marks up the supposed 'reviews' with BlogPosting schema, not with review schema

            7.) Content is dry with poor layout and feels boring. In most reviews no numerical evaluation is made, no star ratings are given. There's no point at which the author accepts: "I am a reviewer now, I must give an opinion, I must give something useful to the user which they could use at a glance". The unwillingness to take responsibility for giving an opinion, combined with the disclaimer which reinforces the author's 'shunning' of their own content (are they worried their own content is bad? Why are they so careful not to give or take responsibility for opinions? The images all look like stock images, are these fake reviews? Right now it feels like yes they are)

            8.) It feels as if this site has bee made 'for the sake of' SEO. That's not the kind of site Google wants to rank


            ... so as you can see, even if you tackle your poor backlinks, this site doesn't really have much hope of ranking well on Google. Google is ultimately looking for trust and a value proposition. Over the materials which Google already has indexed on their first page of results for the reviewed products, the pages on this site don't really add anything. In addition the domain is giving off multiple off-page AND on-page mistrust signals, which will really stand against in the rankings

            In this case I think you'd better head all the way back to the drawing board

            Look at this video in which Miley from Google (think she's an ex-Googler now) outlines the #1 common SEO mistake as 'working without a value proposition':

            • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AmRg3p79pM

            You only need to watch her outline issue #1, the rest of the video isn't that relevant to you

            Also watch Moz's video on how unique content isn't good enough to rank any more:

            https://moz.com/blog/why-good-unique-content-needs-to-die-whiteboard-friday

            ... and how you should craft 10x content to replace the prior 'plague' of 'good unique content':

            https://moz.com/blog/how-to-create-10x-content-whiteboard-friday

            After watching these videos, you should begin to understand why what you're doing isn't working and why it won't work

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 7
            • jasongmcmahon
              jasongmcmahon last edited by

              Hi there,

              It can take takes as little as 48 hours for google to take of a disavow file. after which it can still take weeks even months until google re-crawls the disavowed links and takes the disavow them into account.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • ajegunle

                Unsolved Why is my website Backlinks Lower on Moz than on SEMRush?

                backlinks

                Hi, I'm new to Moz and I am trying to find out why my website Birmingham Roofers has 7 backlinks on Moz it has 21 on SEMRush. However, I read somewhere online in one of your blog post that it crawls in real time.

                Moz Bar | | ajegunle
                1
              • Kingalan1

                Will Removing or Disavowing Toxic Links Improve MOZ Domain Authority?

                The vast majority of the 140 domains that link to our website are very low quality directories or and other toxic links. Only about 20-30 domains are not toxic (according to Link Research Tools confirmed by out manual inspection of these links). Would removing some of these links improve of MOZ Domain Rank? What if we cannot remove them, can NOZ detect a disavow file? In general would improving the ratio between good quality and poor quality links improve domain authority? Thanks,
                Alan

                Moz Bar | | Kingalan1
                2
              • PoppyP

                80% Spam Score!! Can Any One Help?

                I have a question about the Spam Score for my website .
                I have run a Spam Score for https://www.poppyporter.co.uk
                It has come back with an 80% score because there are 4 links that are apparently from my poppyporter.com domain each with a 69% spam score.
                This poppyporter.com domain is parked and I have no idea why there are links from it. There are no pages there and there never have been, I've never used the poppyporter.com domain only poppyporter.co.uk.
                I don't understand why there are links there and why they are making my Spam Score so high.
                Will they affect my site's SEO? Do I need to worry about them? If so how do I get rid of them?
                Can you help?
                Thanks very much Poppy

                Moz Bar | | PoppyP
                1
              • guineto

                Unusually high Spam Score

                Hi! My Spam Score is indicating 39% on MOZ and I can't identify that many signals from the 27-signal list that could be actually raised in order for the score to show such a high value like this. My website is Ronaldo7.net, Is there anyone who could help me understanding what signals exactly I should pay more attention and eventually fix them so the spam score reduces drastically? Are all these Spam Score signals weighed equally? (for example, I don't have a LinkedIn profile/link for my site, so should I assume that for not having it my spam score increases 3-4% (27/100)? I don't think that's the case, so I would really appreciate if anyone could point me in the right directions in order to help me reducing the spam score. One final question, is this Spam Score updated on a daily/weekly or monthly basis? Regards, Guilherme

                Moz Bar | | guineto
                0
              • jamesh.rich01

                Moz not updating the spam score metrics

                Hi Experts, I have done everything to come over the following metrics flagged as spam on my website by Moz, few months ago. But, Moz has not updated the spam score yet. ✓Low MozTrust or MozRank Score - improved from 2 to 4.5
                ✓Large Site with Few Links - My website have more than 6K backlinks
                ✓Small Proportion of Branded Links - My website have a good amount of branded backlinks
                ✓Thin Content - Every webpage on website has more than 500 words content
                ✓External Links in Navigation - There is no external link in navigation other than social media links
                ✓No Contact Info - The proper address has alreay been placed on website footer
                ✓Low Number of Pages Found - I am wondering if there are any standard score or number of links to reach to remove these flag?
                Also, please suggest some ways that will help me improve moz spam score at faster rate. Thanks for your help in advance!"

                Moz Bar | | jamesh.rich01
                0
              • randfish

                What is a Good Keyword Volume Score?

                Hi All! Continuing my series of discussions about the various keyword scores we use here at Moz (previously: Keyword Difficulty & Keyword Opportunity)... Let's move on to Volume. Volume in Moz's tools is expressed in a range, e.g. Bartending Certification has volume of 201-500. These ranges correspond to data we have suggesting that in an average month, that keyword is searched for a minimum of X to a maximum of Y (where X-Y is the volume range). We use clickstream data as well as data from Google AdWords and then some PPC AdWords campaigns we run and have access to when we build the models for our volume data. As such, we've got very high confidence in these numbers -- 95%+ of the time, a given keyword's monthly search volume on Google will fall inside that range. If you want to see all the nitty gritty details, check out Russ Jones post on Moz's Keyword Volume and how we calculate it. As far as a "good" volume score -- higher is usually better, as it means more demand, but lots of keywords with low volume scores can also add up to strong traffic when combined, and they may be more relevant. Capturing exactly the audience you want that also wants you is what SEO is all about. p.s. When Keyword Explorer or Moz Pro gives you a "no data" or "unknown" volume number, it may just mean we haven't collected information from our clickstream providers or AdWords crawls, not that the keyword has no volume (though it sometimes means that, too, we just don't know yet). One way to verify - see if Google Suggest autofills it in when you type in the search box. If it does, that's usually a sign there's at least some volume (even if it's only a few searches a month).

                Moz Bar | | randfish
                11
              • russellbrown

                Keywords Score Meter

                Hi Moz, I am using the keywords difficulty tool from your site and find it is quite useful 🙂 I research the community and find the data should be interpreted in the following way. But when I did a quick research for one keyword. The tool bar gives me a data of 22% showing in Yellow and says the keyword is competitive when I hover my mouse. Should this be **Blue **and easy to rank keyword based on the score? Which one should I believe? Sub 30 - (Blue) Low hanging fruit you can take advantage of. 30 - 35 (Green) Fairly easy with good on page and some quality anchored links. 35 - 40 - (Yellow) Will take a bit more work but still in reach may require, good on-site SEO and a solid link profile. 40 - 50 (Orange) Domain authority plays a much more pivotal role so it may take longer to rank for. 50+ (Red) All about resources. Onsite SEO needs to be totally nailed, including internal linking/ topic modelling etc. a strong & diverse link profile with good social signals and ... time. Thanks in advance. ThAqoa5.png OC8xIzP.png

                Moz Bar | | russellbrown
                0
              • ejunxion

                Is a higher or lower score better in keyword ranking

                I know this is a weird question, I think I have confused myself with different keyword tools. So if you get a score of 10 for your keyword, should you aim to be closer to 1 or 50?

                Moz Bar | | ejunxion
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.