How to Reduce Your Website's Spam Score (and When to Ignore It)
Moz calculates Spam Score from 27 features of your own site, not from who links to you. Change the features that are real problems, ignore the rest: Google says it doesn't use the score.
Low, medium, high: 1-30%, 31-60%, 61-100%.
Who checks it: link exchanges and link sellers, not Google.
In publisher replies to MentionAgent outreach since June 2026, DA or DR came up about ten times as often as Spam Score. Every reply that mentioned Spam Score came from a link exchange or seller.
1 June to 8 October 2026. Method at the end.
How to reduce your website's Spam Score
Spam Score is "the percentage of sites with similar features to the site you're researching which we've found to be penalized or banned by Google" (Moz Help). Moz lists the 27 features its model uses. The ones you can change:
| Flagged when | Fix |
|---|---|
| Few pages found | Publish real pages, and let crawlers reach them |
| No HTTPS by default | Redirect all traffic to HTTPS |
| No email address, phone number or LinkedIn link | Add them to your contact page or footer |
| No favicon | Add one |
| Very long or very short titles and meta descriptions; a meta keywords tag | Write normal-length titles and descriptions; drop meta keywords |
| A canonical tag pointing to another site | Point canonicals at your own pages |
| Abnormally many or few outbound links, or spam-topic anchor text | Remove paid or junk outbound links |
Others you can't sensibly change: numerals, hyphens or odd letter runs in your domain name, low traffic, and having no Google Tag Manager, Facebook pixel or DoubleClick tag. Don't add tracking tags to move a third-party number.
Moz itself says that because the score is "based on correlation with penalization rather than causation, the solution isn't necessarily to change these factors on your site." The score updates when Moz recrawls your site.
Do spammy backlinks raise your Spam Score?
Not by Moz's own list: none of the 27 features is about who links to you. Link Explorer shows your linking domains' scores as a separate breakdown, which Moz suggests using "to judge the quality of inbound links to your site". So removing or disavowing backlinks won't lower your own score.
Review those links for Google's sake, not Moz's. Google says "most sites will not need to use" the disavow tool; see how to disavow backlinks and our backlink audit guide.
Spam Score vs Semrush's Toxicity Score
They measure different things. Moz's Spam Score rates your own site. Semrush's Toxicity Score rates your backlinks: each one gets a score "on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being good and 100 being very toxic", from 45+ toxic markers (Semrush). Your overall score is High if more than 10% of your backlinks are toxic, Medium at 3-9%, Low under 3% (Semrush).
Semrush recalculates it if you "confirm that you have disavowed toxic backlinks in Google Disavow Tool or if Backlink Audit doesn't find your toxic backlinks after a recrawl". Whitelisting links doesn't lower it. Semrush's own guide says a high score marks a link as more likely to be risky, not as harmful. Without a manual action, Google says "most sites will not need to use" the disavow tool, so don't disavow links just to move this number. If you do clean up, start with asking for removal.
Does Spam Score matter for Google?
No. Asked on Reddit how to reduce a spam score, Google's John Mueller said: "Google doesn't use these spam scores. You can do what you want with them. They're not going to change anything for your site." (reported by Search Engine Journal, September 2024). Moz adds: "If you have not had any penalties you shouldn't be concerned about a Low or Medium score."
What Google does act on is link spam, such as "exchanging money for links" or "excessive link exchanges" (buying backlinks).
Who actually checks your Spam Score
Other site owners. In MentionAgent's outreach inbox, the replies that mentioned Spam Score came from four senders:
- 2 link exchange networks, as an entry rule. One required "spam score below 10%".
- 1 site selling placements through a marketplace that lists each site's Ahrefs DR, traffic and Spam Score.
- 1 link seller, with a Spam Score column on its price sheet, every site at 1% to 8%.
None came from an editor deciding whether to link to a page on its merits. If a high score is costing you link exchanges, remember Google lists excessive ones as link spam.
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- Data: every inbound reply to MentionAgent link-building outreach from 1 June to 8 October 2026, excluding our own sales outreach.
- Counting: a reply counted if its own text (quoted history removed) contained "spam score"; each was read by hand. A DA or DR figure counted when the metric name was followed by a number.
- Caveat: we didn't measure Spam Scores ourselves; the fixes above come from Moz's published list of features.
Frequently asked questions
How do I reduce the spam score of my website?
Change the site features Moz flags that are genuine problems: too few pages, no HTTPS, no contact details, odd title lengths, off-site canonicals and junk outbound links. The score updates when Moz recrawls.
Do bad backlinks increase my spam score?
None of the 27 features Moz lists is about who links to you. Your linking domains' scores appear as a separate breakdown.
Does spam score matter for SEO?
Not for Google. John Mueller said Google doesn't use these spam scores. It matters mainly to link exchanges and sellers that screen sites by it.
What is a good spam score?
Moz calls 1% to 30% low, 31% to 60% medium and 61% to 100% high.