On average, 5.07 billion individuals browse the internet daily. Additionally, several websites are created and released nearly every day. With this much competition, gaining prominent visibility becomes a tough nut to crack. However, it is a well-established fact that with significant SEO score, your site is on its path to the SERP ranking you desire.
A good way to boost your site's SERP ranking, although probably not as significant as other methods, is boosting your trust score on the search engine. This would be nearly impossible to achieve with factors like broken links and spammy links tied to one's website. Using tools like MozTrust, you can keep track of your page’s Google TrustRank.
It would help to know as a website master or owner that there are ways to detect what links surrounding your site can be regarded as spammy and in turn diminish your page’s trust score. A good way to accomplish this would be through spam checker sites.
Each of the spam checkers in the network has metrics with which they determine what links should be labeled spammy. Therefore, for credibility, we will put out our three best spam checker sites in this article. Going into the features, metrics, pricing, and mode of use could help you decide which would be best for you.
Top 3 Spam Checker Sites
Not every one of the three tools to be considered below has a direct section for spam score under its reports. However, following the outlined steps would lead you to derive conclusive results as to the nature of the site (spam or not). The top three spam checkers to be reviewed in this article are;
Moz
Through results on the Moz link explorer, individuals can view the spam value of sites that are linking to the site whose link is provided. The value of spam score allocated to sites by Moz is put together considering which features the site shares with the several other sites that have either been banned or penalized by Google. A high spam score (61-100%) would indicate a potential spam site.
Currently, the following are factors that are used by Moz to determine the spam scores of sites.
Nature of domain name – There are various attributes surrounding domain names that could increase the likelihood of the queried sites being spammy. Following established patterns, the following features would increase a site’s spam score on Moz
a domain name that has the same length as spammy sites
a domain name that includes numerals
a domain name with consonants or vowels in a sequence
a domain name that lacks the use of special fonts (like Google Font APIs).
a domain name with multiple hyphens.
Lack of contact options – Most spam sites lack contact details on their site. One would rarely find a valid phone number or at least an email address on these spam sites.
SSL certificate – Several spam sites would rather not pump a lot of their money into the site. Following this, owners of these sites rarely purchase an SSL certificate. In other words, a site with an HTML certificate can mostly be trusted.
Nature of Meta tag, description, and title – Elements like optimized titles, meta tags, and descriptions that one would find on genuine websites are absent from spammy websites. In place of these, spam sites feature extremely long or extremely short titles. The same goes for the meta tags and meta descriptions of these sites.
Other characteristics that can be attributed to spammy sites are –
The absence of double-click ad tags
Absence of Google Tag Manager
Presence of foreign rel-canonical tags.
Absence of favicons.
External links that outweigh on-page content
Absence of Facebook tracking pixels
Too long or too short URL
Use of specific topics/words both in anchor text and the page content that can be attributed to spam sites. Topics like Gaming, adult content, or pharmaceuticals.
How To Use Moz Spam Checker
Visit Moz Pro
Under campaigns, click on links.
Among the drop-down options that appear, click on spam score. Here, you will find the spam score of the site being analyzed, the spam scores of websites that are linked to it, the site’s DA, and linking domains.
Alternatively,
Click on Link Explorer on the Moz Pro platform.
Input a URL into the slated space and click on Spam score among the other options on the left side of the page.
Moz Pro features both monthly and annual subscription options. There are four plans namely:
Standard – $99 monthly and $950 annually ($79 per month)
Medium – $179 monthly and $1719 annually ($143 per month)
Large – $299 monthly and $2868 annually ($239 per month)
Premium – $599 monthly and $5750 annually ($479 per month).
Ahrefs
Ahrefs spam checker is in the form of the Ahrefs Site Explorer. Among the other functions of the site explorer, it provides data with which individuals can decide which links should be disavowed from the Search Console. Using data from this site explorer, you should look into a site whose DR is below 30%. Ahrefs site explorer typically works in these simple steps;
Provide a domain name into the site explorer engine
Among the options under the hamburger icon on the left side of the page, you will find some backlink profile options.
Click on Referring domains. This option shows all links connected to the provided domain and their surrounding metrics like Domain rating.
Considering how spam site links will most likely have a low domain rating, configure the filter to display sites with the lowest domain ratings before those with higher values. To do this, click on the north-facing arrow beside the DR label.
Spam sites and relatively new sites alike have low DR in most cases, therefore, you would need to investigate further to determine if the link to the site is worth keeping. If not, you should disavow such a link.
To decide on which links belong to spam sites,
Visit the site to see whether the page offers low-quality or high-quality content.
Look out for the ratio of irrelevant anchors to the ratio of backlinks. The site is likely to be a spam site if the irrelevant anchors are extremely high.
The anchor text of the suspicious backlink should be inspected. It is likely a spam link if its text is incoherent and not in line with your niche.
Pricing
To use the Ahrefs site explorer, you need to subscribe to a paid plan. Ahrefs has both annual and monthly payment options. These paid packages are
Lite – $99 monthly and $990 annually ($83 a month).
Standard – $199 monthly and $1990 annually ($166 a month)
Advanced – $399 monthly and $3990 annually ($33 a month)
Enterprise – $999 monthly and $9990 annually ($833 a month)
However, you can get basic DR data on domains and links using the Ahrefs backlink checker for free.
SEO Spyglass
SEO Spyglass is one among others that render backlink breakdown with spam score data for sites. It does this using its Toxic Backlink Checker. On this tool, a good spam score lies between 0 and 30%. However, values between 71 to 100% would indicate a spam site. Like with the other two tools, Spyglass considers several metrics in deciding the spam score of sites. Some of these metrics are –
A large number of links from one IP address or with one C-class block.
An overwhelming amount of outbound links on the linking page.
The same word taking up more than 10% of a keyword text.
Links stemming from directories of poor quality
A low inLink Rank value for the referring page/domain.
How to Use SEO Spyglass
Provide your name and email in the designated space on SEO Powersuite and click the Download for free option.
You will find a message directing you to check your mail next. Visit your mailbox and download the Powersuite module sent to you.
To access the module, you would need Linux, Windows 64-bit, Windows 32-bit, or macOS.
Create a new project on SEO Spyglass.
Initiate backlink analysis by inputting a domain name or URL and tap on the option finish.
Among the options under the backlink profile, click on penalty risk. A color code can be found on this page for an easy understanding of the penalty risks of sites. In other words, the spam scores.
Pricing
Upon signing up, a free module containing SEO Spyglass is sent to your inbox. Eventually, you may have to upgrade to a paid plan for a wider range of features. The are two available paid plans namely;
SEO Spyglass Professional– $99 per year; and
SEO Spyglass Enterprise– $199 per year.
Bottom Line
Although there are a good number of link and site analyzers on the internet, only a few have specific spam-checking functions. Seeing how two of the three tools on our list are not available to everyone as a subscription is needed, one may decide to opt for any other website without such specific functions.
Knowing the steps to take to spot spammy links and a few tools that can help with the search, you can proceed to identify these negative elements on your site if any. What would be the right action to take once you discover a spam site linking to your page? Of course, to stop its effect on the trust score of the page you are building, it would be right to disavow the link. A tool like Ahrefs has an indirect link for site owners to take this action. However, a robot txt file would equally suffice to get a link like this off the Search Console.