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.
I bought a 5 year old domain and has a spam score of 23%.....
-
A few months ago i bought a 5 year old domain and when i went to check in Moz pro the spam score, it shows its at 23%. DA is 1 everything else is 0.
The spam score shows 23% but there are no links at all for this website (see image)
I don't understand, there are no links at all going to this website. I checked google search console, analytics and tried looking for any links linking to this domain and there is none.
Even Moz isn't showing any links in the picture i provided above. Is this a glitch? Can i reset my spam score on this domain? Does that mean i wasted my money on this domain and now i can't rank with it?
Is there something im missing here. I also checked is there are any warnings or manual actions and it clearly says "No issues detected".
A few months earlier i bought a brand new domain very close to the 5 year old domain (new domain has a z instead of an s) and the spam score on that is 0 and DA is 1.
Given that the 5 year old domain has a 23% spam score, does that mean i should use the other new domain instead and redirect the 5 year old domain to the new website?
-
Hi thanks for the reply. These are the following i have done to my site and have kept these changes as so for close to 5 months that i had acquired the site for.
1. I turned off robot crawling for the entire site
2. I only have 2 pages which are privacy policy and home page (because the website is going under construction so i havne't added more pages)
3. I don't have any contact info or phone number listed on the site.So these changes i have mentioned line up to what you have mentioned and makes better sense now.
So once i launch the website and everything is flushed out just the way i need it, should i expect the spam score to reset itself to 0% then?
Thanks.
-
Hi there!
Alex here,
I know when you first look at your domain and see a spam score like that it can certainly be frustrating or scary, but don't panic. Just because your "spam score" is at 23% does NOT mean that your site or domain is actually spammy.
The way spam score works (and huge shoutout to the hard working team at Moz for creating it) is by looking at 27 different "signals" or "features" that _most _sites that are spam have, and comparing it to yours. A common misconception is that Spam Score is created by analyzing the links from other spammy sites and who they also link to. There are many factors.
That being said, your domain/site may be getting the score simply because it doesn't "pass" many of the signals like:
- Low number of pages found
- Domain name length
- No Phone Number Present
- Abnormally short or long URL path length
I encourage you to look over all the signals (and keep them in mind as you work with your domain) over at this helpful page:
https://moz.com/help/link-explorer/link-building/spam-scoreThey include a super helpful video as well.
So in summary, feel free to use your domain. Don't get too worried off of the Spam Score alone.
I hope that answered your question and was helpful!
Best,
Alex Ratynski
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
-
GOOGLE ANALYTIC SKEWED DATA BECAUSE OF GHOST REFERRAL SPAM ND CRAWL BOTS
Hi Guys, We are having some major problems with our Google Analytics and MOz account. Due to the large number of ghost/referral spam and crawler bots we have added some heavy filtering to GA. This seems to be working protecting the data from all these problems but also filtering out much needed data that is not coming through. In example, we used to get a hundred visitors a day at the least and now we are down to under ten. ANYBODY PLEASE HELP. HAVE READ THROUGH MANY ARTICLES WITH NO FIND TO PERMANENT SOLID SOLUTION (even willing to go with paid service instead of GA) Thank You so Much, S.M.
Moz Pro | | KristyKK0 -
Whether or not to remove a link from a website with high spam score on Open Site Explorer
Hello Moz! I just subscribed for your Moz Pro program. Amazing stuff! On open site explorer, I found a number of links to my site from a page called with a very high page authority and high domain authority, but also a high spam score (8 or 9, one with a 10). I say multiple spam scores, because it's strange, there are what appears variations of the same url, and each one is considered a link. For instance, there's an abc.linkstomysite.com and xyz.linktomysite.com, and 123.linktomysite.com... there are about 15 of these (all with the spam scores mentioned above)! This must have been some old SEO work done I payed for back in the prehistoric SEO days. However, my fear is the following: Removing these links, and then losing some potentially strong link juice. I don't have many high DA or PA links to my site, and these are some major ones. The domain in question "linktomysite.com", when entered into OSE, only has a spam score of 4, and it has a domain authority of 45 and page authority of 37. My site has a spam score of 2 and no messages from google regarding a penalty, but an overall reduction in google traffic over the years (just keeps slowly dropping... as if a weight is pulling me down?) What do you think, should I leave, or remove? The linkstomysite page is just a LONG page full of links, with short descriptions, nothing of value, but with a an old domain age (relatively). Most important for me is keeping at least some ranking/visibility, while I personally work on building quality links and helpful content. thanks!
Moz Pro | | DavidC.0 -
Relation between domain age and domain authority?
what is relation between domain age and domain authority? Old registered domain help for domain authority higher or not? if so, but i am still in confused, http://www.green-lotus-trekking.com/ this is too old domain but authority is only 33?
Moz Pro | | agsln1 -
How to track data from old site and new site with the same URL?
We are launching a new site within the next 48 hours. We have already purchased the 30 day trial and we will continue to use this tool once the new site is launched. Just looking for some tips and/or best practices so we can compare the old data vs. the new data moving forward....thank you in advance for your response(s). PB3
Moz Pro | | Issuer_Direct0 -
Comparing Domain Authority Scores
Since your scale (like PageRank) is a logarithmic scale, it makes it hard to judge the distance between 2 scores. Can you give me a rule of thumb. For PageRank, each jump is an exponential jump - so that a PR6 is perhaps 10 times stronger than a PR5. What is the log base that SEOMoz uses. Should I assume that a 60 is 10 times stronger than a 50? This is important when it comes to measuring progress because growth is going to get more difficult as you move up the scale and I need to communicate the distance between our current Authority score and our goal. Thank You!
Moz Pro | | apo11o1770 -
The videos we bought of the presentations on MozCon 2011 seem to be disappeared. Can I still watch them somewhere?
Last year we bought the videos of presentations on MozCon 2011. They seemed to be disappeared now. Is there a possibility to still watch them?
Moz Pro | | Hebels0 -
Domain.com and domain.com/index.html duplicate content in reports even with rewrite on
I have a site that was recently hit by the Google penguin update and dropped a page back. When running the site through seomoz tools, I keep getting duplicate content in the reports for domain.com and domain.com/index.html, even though I have a 301 rewrite condition. When I test the site, domain.com/index.html redirects to domain.com for all directories and root. I don't understand how my index page can still get flagged as duplicate content. I also have a redirect from domain.com to www.domain.com. Is there anything else I need to do or add to my htaccess file? Appreciate any clarification on this.
Moz Pro | | anthonytjm0