Spam Score and Link Toxicity
Spam score (in different services — spam score, toxic score, "toxicity") is an assessment of the likelihood that a site or link appears spammy. The key word is "likelihood": this is a metric from a third-party service, not a search engine's position.
What It Usually Consists Of
- The share of outgoing links and their nature.
- Signs of automated content generation.
- Topics: gambling, loans, and pharmaceuticals almost always increase the score.
- Sharp spikes in link growth.
- Neighborhood by profile: who else the domain links to.
How to Relate to It
| Misconception | How It Really Is |
|---|---|
| "High spam score = penalties" | This is an assessment from a third-party tool; Google does not have such public metrics. |
| "All links with high scores should be disavowed" | Mass disavowal often does more harm than good: you can easily throw away working links. |
| "Zero is a mandatory goal" | Large live sites having a non-zero score is normal. |
Why Services Have Different Assessments
The same domain can easily get "2 out of 100" in one tool and "high risk" in another. The reason is that the link databases of the services are different and the formulas are closed: each sees its own part of the internet and weighs the signs differently. Hence the practical rule — do not compare assessments from different services with each other and do not make decisions based on a single number.
When the Metric Is Useful
As a quick filter when analyzing a large list of donors: domains with extreme values should be checked manually. As a basis for decisions — no. What exactly we measure and why we publish numbers with a denominator is described in the article "Where the Numbers in This Knowledge Base Come From".
If the Profile Is Really Spoiled
The tool is one — the disavow file, and it should be used consciously: see disavowing links and analyzing penalties.