How to Check Spam Score (and What a High Score Really Means)

The definition is the part to remember. Spam Score isn't a measure of how spammy a site is, and it isn't a Google metric. It's a correlation: sites that look like this one, on Moz's 27 signals, have often been penalised. That makes it a useful filter and a terrible verdict.

Step by step: check Spam Score for free

1. Sign up for a free Moz Community account if you don't have one.
2. Open Link Explorer and enter the domain you want to check.
3. Read the Spam Score on the right-hand side of the overview.
4. Look at the Spam Score breakdown underneath: it shows what share of the site's linking domains fall into the low, medium and high bands.
5. Open the list of inbound links sorted by Spam Score to see which linking sites scored highest.
6. Export to CSV if you want to work through them. The number of rows you can export depends on your plan.

The bands, as Moz defines them

Spam Score	Band	What to do
1% to 30%	Low	Nothing, unless something else looks wrong
31% to 60%	Medium	Have a look at the site's content and relevance
61% to 100%	High	Investigate before you trust, partner with or link to it
--	Not evaluated yet	Check back later; Moz hasn't scored the site

The 27 signals, and why good sites can score badly

Moz lists the 27 signals its machine learning model uses, and says their numbering has no bearing on importance. Reading them is eye-opening, because many are things a perfectly honest small site might simply not have. A few examples from the list:

• A low number of pages found on the domain.
• A top-level domain often linked with spam, such as .download, .stream, .win or .biz.
• Numerals or several hyphens in the domain name.
• No Google Tag Manager, no Facebook pixel and no favicon.
• No phone number, no email address and no link to LinkedIn on the site.
• Not defaulting to HTTPS.
• Very long or very short title tags and meta descriptions.
• Unusual numbers of outbound links, or anchor text full of words linked to webspam topics.

So a brand-new, five-page site for a local business with no tracking code and no contact email can pick up a medium score without doing anything wrong. That's why Moz itself says a high score is a sign to do more investigation, not proof.

How to use Spam Score on your own site

If you haven't had a penalty, Moz says you shouldn't worry about a low or medium score. Because it's based on correlation rather than cause, changing those features won't necessarily help. The better use is to judge the sites linking to you: sort your inbound links by Spam Score and review the high ones by hand.

Moz also notes that its index can't see which links you've disavowed, so the score doesn't change after a disavow file. Before you go down that road, read my take on whether to disavow toxic backlinks yourself.

How to use it on someone else's site

Spam Score earns its keep when you're checking a site before a guest post, a partnership or a link exchange. Use it as the first filter, then do the human checks it can't:

• Is the content real, readable and on a consistent topic?
• Does the site link out to the kind of sites it should, or to anything that'll pay?
• Does it have a real about page, real authors and real contact details?
• Does it get search traffic, or just links?

Things Spam Score can't tell you

A few limits straight from Moz's help page: you can't see which of the 27 features your own site triggered, there's no history of how a score has changed, and the score updates quarterly, changing only when Moz's crawlers detect changes to the signals. If you need scores for a long list of sites, Moz points to its Links API or a Link Tracking List export.

A quick worked example

Say you're weighing up a guest post on a cooking blog and Link Explorer shows a Spam Score in the medium band, between 31% and 60%. Open the site: if it has years of real recipes, named authors, a contact page and comments from readers, the score is probably picking up missing technical extras like a tracking tag or a favicon. If instead every post links out to casinos and loan sites with exact-match anchors, the score was right to flag it, and you walk away.

Spam Score versus Domain Authority

They measure different things. Domain Authority, on a 1 to 100 scale, predicts how likely a site is to rank compared with others, based mainly on links. Spam Score estimates risk from site features. A site can have decent authority and a high Spam Score, which usually means it's worth a closer look. For other tools that show authority and link quality side by side, see my list of Moz alternatives.

My verdict

Check Spam Score, but don't obey it. Treat anything high as a prompt to open the site and look closely, and ignore a medium score on your own site unless you've seen a real drop in traffic. The human check always gets the final say.

Pairs well with my guide to checking Page Authority for free, the page level companion to this one.

Frequently asked questions

How do I check my Spam Score for free?

Create a free Moz Community account, open Link Explorer, enter your domain and read the Spam Score on the overview. You'll also see how your linking domains split across the bands.

What is a good Spam Score?

Moz calls 1% to 30% low. A low or medium score on your own site isn't a worry unless you've had a penalty.

Is Spam Score a Google metric?

No. It's a Moz metric showing the percentage of sites with similar features that Moz found to be penalised or banned by Google.

How often does Spam Score update?

Moz says it updates quarterly, and an individual site's score only changes if its crawlers detect changes to the 27 signals.

Should I disavow links with a high Spam Score?

Not on the score alone. Moz recommends reviewing each site's content and relevance first, because the score is a correlation, not proof of spam.