Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Would you disavow links that have a Moz Spam score of 5?
-
As the question suggests...
-
Spam score can be a useful adjunct when helping you decide which links to disavow, but you should never make a disavow decision based on spam score alone.
The disavow tool should be used by site owners who have a huge problem with unnatural links. If you know that this link is one that you yourself made for SEO purposes alone and that you have lots of links like this, then yes, you should probably disavow it.
But otherwise I wouldn't be too concerned.
-
No problem. I've expanded upon the original answer to clarify what the Spam Score references. This may be useful. (Read from UPDATE: down).
I hope that helps.
-
Thank you!
-
Nope. Moz suggest you don't get too excited about anything below an 8 and even then proceed with caution. Disavowing links is not usually something Google would expect you to need to get involved in, unless you are dealing with thousands of links.
"This [Disavow backlinks] is an advanced feature and should only be used with caution. If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google’s search results. We recommend that you disavow backlinks only if you believe you have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, and if you are confident that the links are causing issues for you. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool."
From: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487
EGOL (who is wise in such matters) references this in a recent Q and A post and says he has never disavowed a single backlink, I've only ever done so once, in a panic and don't see myself doing so again. Much better to concentrate your efforts into countering the spammy links with great content.
UPDATE: Another thing to consider, if you click on Open Site Explorer > Spam Analysis - You'll see a number of these flags are issues you can fix without disavowing links. More often than not, you can fix a few of those. And remember, the Spam Score is not some hard and fast rule that Google follows; they are just a set of signals that Moz believe to have a correlation to Google penalties.
Here's the full list of Spam Flags from OSE > Spam Analysis:
Low MozTrust or MozRank Score
The site link profile is not trustworthy.✓
Large Site with Few Links
We found very few sites linking to this site, considering its size.✓
Site Link Diversity is Low
The diversity of link sources to this subdomain is low.✓
Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Subdomains
The ratio of followed to nofollowed subdomains linking to this subdomain is outside the normal range of others in our index.✓
Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Domains
The ratio of followed to nofollowed domains linking to this subdomain is outside the normal range of others in our index.✓
Small Proportion of Branded Links
Links to this subdomain have low amounts of branded anchor text.✓
Thin Content
A subset of pages within this subdomain have little content.✓
Site Mark-up is Abnormally Small
There's a high ratio of visible text compared to HTML, JavaScript, etc.✓
Large Number of External Links
A subset of pages within this subdomain has a large number of external links.✓
Low Number of Internal Links
Pages crawled on the subdomain have a small number of internal links.✓
Anchor Text Heavy Page
There's a high ratio of anchor text compared to content text.✓
External Links in Navigation
There's a large number of external links within sidebars and footers.✓
No Contact Info
None of the pages crawled contain an email address or links to a social profile.✓
Low Number of Pages Found
Crawl only gets a valid response to a small number of pages.✓
TLD Correlated with Spam Domains
This subdomain is on a top level domain (TLD) extension often found to be the source of spam links.✓
Domain Name Length
This domain name's character count is higher than average.✓
Domain Name Contains Numerals
Domain names including numbers are often found to be the source of spam links.Good luck.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do links from subdomains pass the authority and link juice of main domain ?
Hi, There is a subdomain with a root domain's DA 90. I can earn a backlink from that subdomain. This subdomain is fresh with no traffic yet. Do I get the ranking boost and authority from the subdomain? Example: I can earn a do-follow link from **https://what-is-crm.netlify.app/ **but not from https://netlify.app
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | teamtc0 -
Too many dofollow links = penalty?
Hi. I currently have 150 backlinks, 90% of them are dofollow, while only 10% are nofollow. I recently hit position #10 for my main keyword, but now it is dropped to #16 and a lot of related keywords are gone. So I have a few questions: 1. Was my website penalized for having an unnatural backlink profile (too many dofollow links), or maybe this drop in positions is just a temporary, natural thing? 2. Isn’t it too late for making the backlink profile look more natural by building more nofollow backlinks and making it 50%/50%? Thank you!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NathalieBr0 -
Is this campaign of spammy links to non-existent pages damaging my site?
My site is built in Wordpress. Somebody has built spammy pharma links to hundreds of non-existent pages. I don't know whether this was inspired by malice or an attempt to inject spammy content. Many of the non-existent pages have the suffix .pptx. These now all return 403s. Example: https://www.101holidays.co.uk/tazalis-10mg.pptx A smaller number of spammy links point to regular non-existent URLs (not ending in .pptx). These are given 302s by Wordpress to my homepage. I've disavowed all domains linking to these URLs. I have not had a manual action or seen a dramatic fall in Google rankings or traffic. The campaign of spammy links appears to be historical and not ongoing. Questions: 1. Do you think these links could be damaging search performance? If so, what can be done? Disavowing each linking domain would be a huge task. 2. Is 403 the best response? Would 404 be better? 3. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Thank you for taking the time to read and consider this question. Mark
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MarkHodson0 -
Moz was unable to crawl your site? Redirect Loop issue
Moz was unable to crawl your site on Jul 25, 2017. I am getting this message for my site: It says "unable to access your homepage due to a redirect loop. https://kuzyklaw.com/ Site is working fine and last crawled on 22nd July. I am not sure why this issue is coming. When I checked the website in Chrome extension it saysThe server has previously indicated this domain should always be accessed via HTTPS (HSTS Protocol). Chrome has cached this internally, and did not connect to any server for this redirect. Chrome reports this redirect as a "307 Internal Redirect" however this probably would have been a "301 Permanent redirect" originally. You can verify this by clearing your browser cache and visiting the original URL again. Not sure if this is actual issue, This is migrated on Https just 5 days ago so may be it will resolved automatically. Not sure, can anybody from Moz team help me with this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CustomCreatives0 -
How/Why do I have so many Spam backlinks?
I was looking in GWT yesterday and found we have several thousand "spam" backlinks...I am curious why this happens and how this happens? There are some links from websites/domains that are not mine that appear to be spam. However, we own a large group of domains and have noticed some of the links are coming from 2 of those sites/domains we own to my main site. The sites/domains are not active, we just own them. I am wondering how someone could access these domains that are not active and create spammy backlinks to my main website? (They created about 20,000 links). Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | carlystemmer0 -
Are All Paid Links and Submissions Bad?
My company was recently approached by a website dedicated to delivering information and insights about our industry. They asked us if we wanted to pay for a "company profile" where they would summarize our company, add a followed link to our site, and promote a giveaway for us. This website is very authoritative and definitely provides helpful use to its audience. How can this website get away with paid submissions like this? Doesn't that go against everything Google preaches? If I were to pay for a profile with them, would I request for a "nofollow" link back to my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper1 -
Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
I have some clients that recently got hit by "Penguin" they have several less than desireable backlinks that could be the issue? Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed? What are the odds that a webmaster on these spammy sites are going to remove them, and is it worth the time and effort?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin3 -
Partners and Customers logo listing and links
We have just created a program where we list the customers that use our software and a link to their websites on a new "Customers" page. We expect to have upwards of 100 logos with links back to their sites. I want to be sure this isn't bordering on gray or black hat link building. I think it is okay since they are actual users of our software. But there is still that slight doubt. Along these same lines, would you recommend adding a nofollow or noindex tag? Thanks for your help.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PerriCline0