Wondering what is Moz Spam Score? How you can check Moz Spam Score and does it have an impact on your website organic rankings?
I have seen many webmasters and digital marketers seriously concerned about the Moz Spam score of their website. The spam score is largely associated with link building which is an integral part of SEO, the most important channel of digital marketing.
Are you one of those webmasters who start looking for steps to control or reduce the existing Moz spam score of your domain?
Well, don’t be! Because Moz spam scores and rankings are not related to each other.
What is Moz Spam Score?
Moz Spam Score is a numerical value that represents the likelihood of your website being penalized by Google. The higher the percentage, the greater is the spam score of a website.
A high Moz Spam Score doesn’t necessarily mean the site is spammy. It represents a variety of potential signals ranging from content quality to low authority metrics.
Moz Spam Score should be used to judge the quality and relevancy of backlinks and internal links.
How to Check the Moz Spam Score?
To check the spam score of any domain, you need to download the Moz bar for free and install it in your browser.
After you have installed it in your browser, you will see the Moz bar icon as shown in the below screenshot:
Click on the icon and login to your Moz account. You will have to create a Moz account in case you don’t have one. You can create a Moz account for free. There is no need to subscribe to any of the paid subscription plans that are offered by the Moz software.
After you have logged in to your Moz account, you will see the complete domain metrics from every website you visit including the Moz spam score. An example is given below:
How is Moz Spam Score Calculated?
Moz spam score uses 27 signals to judge the quality of a website.
Moz analyzed millions of websites and identified certain features that were common in sites that were penalized by Google.
It uses machine learning to compare those components with the current domains in question.
This means that the overall Moz spam score of a site is an aggregate of 27 different flags. The more the flags, the more the spam score.
It’s worth noticing that spam score gives you the likelihood of spam only for subdomains.
Moz says, “There are plenty of exceptions—manipulative links can and do live on plenty of high-quality sites—but as we’ve tested, we found that subdomain-level Spam Score was the best solution we could create at web scale.”
Don’t be confused between a subdomain and a subdirectory. A subdomain is an additional part of your domain name, while a subdirectory is a path within your site.
For instance, blog.example.com is a subdomain of www.example.com, and www.example.com/blog is a subdirectory.
Components of Moz Spam Score
Moz considers several factors while providing the spam score to a domain. Let’s have a look at all of them (in no particular order).
1 – A Low Number of Pages
Moz considers websites with a low number of pages as spam.
This doesn’t mean your site needs to have hundreds of pages, but Moz found most spam sites have a small number of pages, hence the correlation.
2 – Spammy Domain
These are the sites with TLD (top-level domains) that most of the spammy sites use. It includes:
- .info
- .cf
- .ga
- .ml
- .loan
- .tk
- .work
- .organic
- .men
- .date
3 – Absence of Google Font API
Domains that do not have special fonts, such as Google Font API present on them, are generally considered similar to spammy sites.
4 – Lacking Google Tag Manager and Doubleclick Ad Tag
Google Tag Manager allows you to manage marketing tags on your website without modifying the code. However, spam sites tend not to install Google Tag Manager.
Similarly, spam sites rarely have a Doubleclick ad tag on them. This is Google’s way of managing online advertising. It helps them learn which ads, campaigns, or products generate the best sales.
5 – No LinkedIn Link Present
Sites that have a link pointing to their LinkedIn account are far from being marked as a potential spammy website. This means the ones without a LinkedIn link have a higher probability of being correlated with spam resulting in a high Moz spam score.
6 – Phone Number and Email
Reputable websites have their contact info present. It can be found anywhere like the footer or contact us page. This indicates that there is a legit person behind the website. But in the case of spammy sites, you can’t find their phone number and email anywhere on their website.
7 – No HTTPS
HTTPS indicates that the site is SSL certified, meaning the information of the customers is encrypted. It is an indication of a safe and secure website. The absence of HTTPS is a good indicator of spammy websites.
8 – Domain Length
The longer the domain name, the more likely it is a spam. Additionally, spam sites tend to have the same length for both the root domain and the subdomain.
For example, “contentmarketingblog.searchenginealgorithms.com”.
9 – Domain Name With Numerals
Websites with numeric characters in the domain name are usually perceived to be similar to spam sites resulting in a high Moz spam score.
10 – Meta Keywords
The meta keyword tag is used to inform search engines which keywords are the most relevant to the content of a given page. Websites that use too many meta keywords are more likely to be spam than those that don’t.
Another signal of spam sites is that they use very long meta keywords on multiple pages.
11 – Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions are shown to the searchers below the website’s link and content title. It is recommended to write meta descriptions for better SEO. However, Google cuts them off at 155-160 characters. Spammy sites often take this to the next level by writing too long meta descriptions. Longer meta descriptions lead to a high Moz spam score.
12 – Non-Local Rel=Canonical Tags
A rel=canonical tag tells search engines that the specified URL is the master version of the page. Sites using a non-local rel=canonical tag are often associated with spam.
13 – Length of Title Element
Titles highlight what you can expect on the page. Spam sites tend to have either very long or concise titles.
14 – Favicons
Favicons are a small 16 x 16 pixels that appear on the left side of the browser’s address bar. High-authority websites have favicons (usually their logo). Spam sites rarely use favicons.
15 – Facebook Pixel
Facebook Pixel is a code that helps measure user behavior and actions. According to Moz, spam sites never have Facebook Pixel.
16 – External Outlinks
External links (when utilized properly) can improve the authority and credibility of your content. However, spam sites have either too high or low external links.
17 – Number of Domains Linked-to
When a website has abnormally high or low unique domains to which they link, it is considered as spam resulting in a high Moz spam score.
18 – Ratio of External Links to Content
Legitimate sites that are built for users have a limited number of external links in their content (usually 5-10 but can be more depending on the size of the content). If there are too many external links, then chances are the site is spammy.
19 – Vowels/Sequentials in Domain Name
A domain name can be the first indicator of spam websites. If there are many sequential vowels or consonants in the domain name, then it is perceived to be spammy and has a high Moz spam score.
20 – Hyphens in Domain Name
Very few legitimate websites use multiple hyphens in the domain name. As opposed to it, spam sites are more likely to use numerous hyphens in their domain name.
21 – Presence of Poison Words
Poison words are the ones that are associated with webspam topics, such as adult content, gaming, casinos, and pharmaceuticals. If there are too many poison words in the content, then the odds of the website being spammy are very high.
Also, Spam sites tend to have only poison words in the anchor text of outbound links.
Does Moz Spam Score Impact Rankings?
As mentioned above, the spam score should be used as a reference to investigate the quality of content, internal, and external links.
So the answer is, no, Moz Spam Score does not impact rankings. In fact, there are some popular websites with high spam scores, yet they rank on the top of the search results.
Top Sites That Have a High Moz Spam Score
Let’s have a look at the five popular sites with high spam scores and understand why they rank on the top.
1 – Tmall
Tmall is a B2C online retail company operated by the Alibaba Group. It operates in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
Despite having a Moz Spam Score of 17%, Tmall ranks on the top of the search results because it has a very high domain authority (89%).
Another reason it ranks highly is that it has acquired backlinks from well-established domains, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Wikipedia, Medium, etc.
2 – Netflix
Netflix is the most popular on-demand online movies and TV shows streaming service. However, it has a Moz spam score of 33%.
The primary reason it ranks on the top of the SERPs is the high number of direct visits (87.80%) to the website. When a lot of people visit the website directly, it sends a signal to Google that the domain is of high value and authority. Besides, the average time spent on the website is also high (9 minutes 18 seconds).
3 – Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is a Q&A site for programmers. It has a Moz spam score of 13%, yet it ranks highly on search engines.
Apart from having links from top-authority websites like Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft, Stack Overflow has high incoming traffic from search engines.
When lots of people visit a website through organic search and spend too much time there, it tells search engines that the domain is of high value and authority.
4 – Rediff
Rediff is an Indian news, information, entertainment, and shopping web portal.
Despite having a Moz spam score of 15%, Rediff appears on the top of the search results for its target keywords because the pages/session is high (6.32) and a low bounce rate (28.80%).
5 – Global Times
Global Times is an English-language Chinese newspaper. It has a Moz spam score of 16%.
The primary reason it ranks on the top of the SERPs is that it has got backlinks from high-authority websites, including FeedBurner, Medium, and Secureserver.net.
What’s Common in Websites That Rank Higher Despite Having a High Moz Spam Score?
If you notice, all these websites have a high domain authority and have acquired backlinks from well-established websites. Besides, the average visit duration is also high, which tells search engines that the website has the information the user was looking for.
How To Reduce The Moz Spam Score?
Here are some of the ways through which you can reduce the spam score of your domain (website):
- Increase the number of pages on your website. Spam sites often have a small number of pages.
- Get a .com TLD for your domain if you have a TLD that matches with most of the spam sites like .info, .cc, etc.
- Avoid using keywords in the domain name or the subdomain. Do not keep the domain name and subdomain name the same just to earn high rankings. This is a Black Hat SEO technique and calls for trouble.
- Remove numbers from your domain. Choose a name that can be easily remembered. The shorter, the better.
- Remove vowels, consonants, and hyphens from your domain name.
- Add Google font API to your site. It supports high-quality open source font files. Here is how to get started with the Google font API.
- Add DoubleClick, Facebook tracking pixel, and Google Tag Manager tag on your site. Spam sites do not have them. These tags are associated with advertising. If you add these tags then you can lower your Moz spam score significantly.
- Add a phone number, email address, and LinkedIn profile URL to your website. Make it easy for users to contact your business.
- Use HTTPS because all trustworthy sites use HTTPS to secure the connection made by the browser to the server.
- Remove meta keywords from all the pages of your site.
- Avoid using a non-local rel=canonical tag.
- Keep all your meta descriptions and meta titles within the desired limits. If you are running your website in WordPress then you can use the Yoast SEO plugin to check the length of your title and description tags.
- Keep all the OBLs (Outbound links) within limits. Abnormally high outbound links can raise your Moz spam score.
- Adjust the URL of your pages to an appropriate length. Again, the Yoast SEO plugin can help you create an SEO-friendly URL.
- Remove words that are associated with spam sites within your content or in the anchor text.
Additionally, keep your website link profile natural because although this won’t affect the spam score, it can significantly increase the chances of your website getting penalized by Google. Here is how you can remove unnatural links pointing to your site:
- Check all the inbound links pointing to your website. You can take the help of Google Search Console or any other link checker tool like the Moz Link Explorer. Prepare a list of spammy links and disavow them via the Search Console. You need to prove to Google that you have not created the spammy links yourself.
- Send an email to every webmaster that has a spammy link to your domain and ask them to remove your link. Disavowing is not enough. You need to get the low-quality links removed to lower your Moz spam score.
- Check the Search Console for any messages that you might have received from Google. Take appropriate action and keep your website error-free.
Final Thoughts
Moz spam score is an indicator that websites with similar features have been penalized or banned by Google. If your website has a high Moz spam score, you should start analyzing your content, backlinks, and internal links to identify and eliminate bad ones.
