What is this metric?
The Spam Score is a helpful scoring metric that is given to any site to help you determine the potential risks of your website’s penalization by search engines like Google. The percentage score is based on similar websites Google (or other search engines) have flagged and banned.
Although Google says that it is not part of their ranking algorithms, empirical tests show that it is factored in.
On that note, this metric is a powerful indicator that can alert you if you are receiving toxic links or co-hosted on a spammy IP.
The range of Spam Scores goes from 0 to 100, you want a low score here. Obviously, having a higher percentage means your site is more likely to get penalized.
- A score of 1%-30% is a Low Score
- A score of 31%-60% is a Medium Score
- A score of 61%-100% is a High Score
High Spam Score, what now?
If you have a high score, it is important to look closely at this metric. As a next step, you should evaluate the potential spam of your subdomains and your backlinks’ subdomains. Once you have identified the toxic links, you should start a disavow process in Google Search console to remove them from your link profile.
If you can’t identify any toxic links, your next investigation should be the hosting server. Are you on shared hosting? Chances are you’re in a “bad neighborhood”. A reverse IP lookup will allow you to inspect fellow sites on your IP and identify the culprits.
Further Reading: 1
Nick Berns is a web developer & SEO specialist.
