Spam Score: what Moz's number means for your link profile
Spam Score is the share of sites with features like yours that Moz found penalised: 1 to 30% low, 31 to 60% medium, 61 to 100% high. A flag, not a penalty.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·7 min read
Spam Score is Moz's percentage of sites with features similar to the one you're checking that Moz has found penalised or banned by Google. Moz rates 1% to 30% as low, 31% to 60% as medium and 61% to 100% as high, and a high score is a reason to look at a site, not a penalty and not proof of spam.
The score comes from a machine learning model trained on "millions of banned or penalized sites," which found 27 features common among them. Because it is built on correlation, Moz itself warns against acting on the number alone. Below is what the bands mean, which signals feed them, and what to do when your link profile shows a high one.
What does Spam Score mean?
Spam Score answers one question: of the sites that look like this one on 27 measurable features, what share has Moz seen penalised or banned by Google? A score of 45% means 45% of similar sites were penalised in Moz's data. It says nothing about whether this particular site has been.
Moz is careful about the wording. "A high Spam Score for your site, or a site you're looking at, doesn't mean this site is necessarily spammy. It's a sign that you should do some more investigation into the quality and relevance of this site." And it adds that the score is "based on correlation with penalization rather than causation."
Two details trip people up:
Spam Score is a property of a site, not of the links to it. Moz answers this directly in its help: it is not "a calculation of the Spam Score of sites linking to me." Your own score describes your site's features.
It updates quarterly, and only changes when Moz's crawlers detect a change in the 27 signals. A score of "--" means Moz has not evaluated that site yet.
What are the Spam Score bands?
Moz splits the score into three bands: 1% to 30% is low, 31% to 60% is medium, and 61% to 100% is high. For your own site, Moz says that if you have had no penalties, "you shouldn't be concerned about a Low or Medium score." For sites linking to you, the band decides how closely to look.
Band
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
What does Spam Score mean?
Spam Score is Moz's estimate of the percentage of sites with features similar to the one you're checking that Moz has found penalised or banned by Google. It comes from a machine learning model built on 27 signals, and it measures correlation, not proof that a site is spam.
Nothing, unless the linking page is clearly irrelevant
Medium
31% to 60%
A meaningful share of similar sites were penalised
Open the linking page and check it by hand
High
61% to 100%
Most sites with these features were penalised
Check the linking page first; consider removal or disavow only if it is clearly spam and part of a pattern
Moz's Link Explorer also shows a Spam Score breakdown for any site: the percentage of its linking domains that fall into each band. That breakdown, not a single number, is the useful view of a link profile. A profile where most linking domains sit in the low band is normal; one with a large share in the high band deserves a read-through.
Which 27 signals make up Spam Score?
Moz lists the 27 features its model found common among penalised sites, and says the numbering "has no bearing on the importance of each signal." You can't see which of them your site triggered; Moz says that information "isn't currently available," so you check your site against the list yourself.
Grouped by what they look at:
Group
Signals Moz lists
The domain name
TLD correlated with spam domains (Moz's examples: .download, .stream, .win, .biz); domain name length; numerals in the domain; vowel and consonant runs; hyphens in the domain
Size and visits
Low number of pages found; visit rank from clickstream panels
Trust markers (their absence counts)
Google Font API; Google Tag Manager; DoubleClick; phone number; email address; links to LinkedIn; defaults to HTTPS; browser icon (favicon); Facebook Pixel
Page markup
Meta keywords present; length of meta keywords; length of title; length of meta description; a non-local rel=canonical; URL length
Links and words
Number of external outlinks; number of domains linked to; ratio of external links to content; "poison words" such as pharmaceuticals, adult content and gaming; high-CPC anchor text in outlinks
Read the list and the limits become obvious. A new, legitimate site with a handful of pages, no analytics tags, no phone number and no LinkedIn link trips several signals without doing anything wrong. That is why Moz says the fix "isn't necessarily to change these factors on your site."
Is a high Spam Score a Google penalty?
No. Spam Score is Moz's estimate, built from Moz's crawl, and Google does not use it. Google said in March 2024 that third-party "reputation" or "authority" scores "don't correspond to any of Google's own signals nor come from Google." A real penalty is a manual action, listed in Search Console's Manual Actions report.
If you want to know whether Google has acted on your links, look there. The "Unnatural links to your site" manual action means Google "has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site." No manual action and a medium Spam Score means Moz's model sees resemblance, and nothing more.
Spam Score sits beside other third-party numbers that disagree with each other for the same reason: each company models the web from its own crawl. Domain Rating explained covers how Ahrefs' DR and Moz's DA differ.
How do you read Spam Score on the sites linking to you?
Sort your linking domains by Spam Score, then open the actual pages that link to you, starting with the high band. The score tells you where to look; the page tells you what you have. A high-scoring site that is a small, relevant blog is fine. A page stuffed with outbound links to unrelated products is not.
Work through the high and medium bands in this order:
Export your linking domains with their Spam Scores. Link Explorer exports to CSV; in a Link Tracking List export, Spam Score is in column D.
Open each high-band linking page. Note whether it is a real page a person would read, and whether it is about something related to your product.
Find your link on the page. Is it in the body text, or in a footer, sidebar or a list of hundreds of links?
Read the anchor text. Your brand name or URL is normal; a keyword phrase you never asked for is a warning sign.
Check whether the site sells links or posts. A "write for us" page with a price list, or dozens of unrelated "sponsored" posts, is the pattern Google's link spam policy targets.
Mark each page keep, ask to remove, or disavow candidate. Only the last group goes near the disavow tool, and only under the conditions below.
Before you remove anything, check whether the same sites link to your competitors, using how to find your competitors' backlinks. A directory or roundup that lists your whole category is a normal link to keep, whatever its score.
Should you disavow links because of their Spam Score?
No, not on the score alone. Moz says the solution "isn't necessarily to disregard sites or disavow links with higher Spam Scores," and to check "a site's content and its relevance in linking back to you before disregarding or disavowing." Google says most sites will never need the disavow tool.
Google's own bar for disavowing is two conditions together: "a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, AND the links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action." It calls the tool "an advanced feature" that "can potentially harm your site's performance" if used incorrectly, and says that "in most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance."
So a few high-Spam-Score links, with no manual action and no history of buying links, need no action at all. When and how to disavow, including the file format, is in toxic backlinks: should you disavow?.
How do you check Spam Score?
Moz's Link Explorer shows Spam Score for any domain, including the band breakdown of its linking domains. A free Moz Community account gets 10 queries a month, and Spam Score is among the metrics included free. For many domains at once, Moz offers the Links API or a Link Tracking List exported to CSV.
Keep the limits in mind when you compare it with other tools. Spam Score has no history view, it updates quarterly, and it covers the sites Moz has crawled. Another vendor's spam or toxicity metric is a different model on a different index and will not match it.
See your link profile's spam score in the full audit
LaunchScaler's full audit reads your link profile from a live link index and grades its aggregate Spam Score on Moz's bands: a profile in the low band passes, the medium band warns, and the high band fails. A second check looks at how many of your linking domains sit on throwaway web addresses; it warns at one in ten and never fails, because no link should be disavowed on its address alone. Both are among twenty backlink checks, each opened to its evidence and exact fix. The free scan does not include backlinks, so run the free scan first, then open the full audit from your report for $19, one time, for that domain. Run the free scan first, then open the full audit.
Moz calls 1% to 30% low, 31% to 60% medium and 61% to 100% high. Moz says a site that has had no penalties shouldn't be concerned about a low or medium score.
03
Does a high Spam Score mean Google has penalised my site?
No. Spam Score is a third-party estimate and Google does not use it. A real penalty shows up as a manual action in Search Console's Manual Actions report.
04
Should I disavow backlinks with a high Spam Score?
Not on the score alone. Moz recommends checking each site's content and relevance before disavowing, and Google says most sites never need the disavow tool unless spammy links have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action.
05
How do I check Spam Score for free?
Moz's Link Explorer includes Spam Score in the data a free Moz Community account can see, with 10 free queries a month. It shows your site's own score and how your linking domains split across the low, medium and high bands.
Most sites should not disavow. Google says use the tool only for spammy links that caused, or may cause, a manual action. The rules and the file format.
