What is Spam Score?
Moz's 1-100% metric estimating how likely a site is to be penalized by Google, based on signals shared with banned sites.
Written by DidYouSEO Team·Updated April 2026
Definition
Spam Score is a metric created by Moz that estimates the likelihood a website will be penalized or banned by Google. It is expressed as a percentage from 1% to 100%, calculated by comparing a site against 27 signals that Moz found were common among sites Google had penalized or de-indexed - things like a very low ratio of branded links, thin content, few internal links, or a suspicious top-level domain. A score of 1-30% is considered low risk, 31-60% medium, and 61-100% high. Importantly, Spam Score is Moz's statistical estimate, not a number Google publishes or uses.
Why it matters for SEO
Spam Score matters in two situations. First, when vetting link prospects: if you are considering getting a link from a site, a very high Spam Score is a warning sign the link may do nothing or associate you with a bad neighborhood. Second, when auditing your own backlink profile: if many high-spam-score sites link to you, it is worth reviewing whether those links look manipulative. That said, a high score alone is not proof of spam - some legitimate niche sites score high simply because they share surface features with spammy ones. Treat it as a flag to investigate, never an automatic verdict.
How to check spam score
You can check Spam Score free in Moz Link Explorer (limited queries per month). If you find genuinely manipulative links pointing at your site, Google's guidance is that they mostly ignore them - but for clear-cut cases like a negative SEO attack, you can submit a disavow file. DidYouSEO's free disavow generator formats one correctly, and the site audit covers the on-page quality signals that actually keep your site out of trouble.
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Related terms
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A systematic review of a website's technical and on-page SEO health, covering title tags, meta, schema, speed, and more.
robots.txt
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