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!
-
Huh! Fair enough.
-
I was searching on freedownloadhub linkexchange and happened across this thread. It look like the site has taken down all of the link exchange pages. They still return a 200 (found) response code, but have the following text:
Link Exchange Update
Due to changes in Google's ranking rules this service has become outdated. Due to a number of requests to de-list URLs, we have decided to end this service.
-
Anything with "Link Exchange" in the title should be bumped to a Spam Score 100
Those are really, really horrible links. I'd probably disavow them just to be safe. On the other hand, unless you've received a manual action notice in Google Webmaster Tools, it's quite possible those links aren't hurting you at all and Google is simply ignoring them.
On the other hand, those links are just awful.
-
...wow. Yeah, you're not kidding. Everything from the domain to "/Link-Exchange" looks so spammy as to be almost comical. If someone showed me that site, I'd tell them it's spam without hesitating.
I'm starting to lean toward killing those links, definitely. It's a tough call, though. Or at least a strange one.
-
Thanks, Matt. The strange thing is that when you plug the site into OSE, it has the spam score of 4, but on my link analysis, the scores are 8, 9, and 10.
Not to mention there are a bunch of subdomains of same page, take a look below please.. everything screams spam, but the DA and PA is what's keeping me from disavowing or removing (probably need to learn these individual terms, DA and PA, a little better). Plus my own spam score is only 2... so maybe not harming me?
http://www.xdsddwfdwwffdwd.freedownloadhub.com/Link-Exchange/browse.php?id=6
http://www.xdsddsfcwfwdwasffdwd.freedownloadhub.com/Link-Exchange/browse.php?id=6
http://www.dsessssderfeg.freedownloadhub.com/Link-Exchange/browse.php?id=6
and 10 more just like it.
Looks so crappy to me, but like you said, with a 45 DA, I'm really thinking about it. Not to mention, I really need to work on getting some quality links, but it's hard in my niche (men's sexual health)... so removing something with good rank to it, worries me.
-
Hi David!
You're getting great advice from Andy and Patrick, but I wanted to add that a site with a spam score of 4 and a DA of 45 is really unlikely to cause you a problem. Rand's initial post on spam score may clarify a bit, but we don't generally flag a link as potentially harmful until it has a score of 5.
I can't guarantee that site is _not _causing harm, but a 45 DA is reasonably solid. Really consider whether you want to risk losing any potential benefits from that link before you get rid of it.
-
Absolutely - would be worth adding Anchor Text into the mix as well.
-Andy
-
Hi there
Very true - but nofollow's do provide value and can potentially be great links.
I will add this though - thanks so much!
-
You missed a biggy Patrick - is it dofollow / nofollow
-Andy
-
Hi there
Based on what you're saying here, I would remove this link and disavow it.
The best way to assess backlinks are to ask the following questions:
-
Does this link help my website?
-
Does it send quality traffic?
-
Is this link relevant to my website?
-
Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
-
Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
-
If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?
-
Are the links from directory templates? (example)
-
Inspect URLs with blatant spam words
-
Free
-
Porn
-
XXX
-
Submit
-
Directory
-
Paid
-
Links
-
URL
-
Sex
-
etc.
-
Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs
-
This can usually show link farms or spam
-
Don't be quick to discount nofollow links - nofollow's do provide value, so as long as they pass your sniff test, don't remove them simply because of this tag
These links don't provide any value, and the higher the spam score the more reason you have to remove it. Although, you should get second opinions from tools like Majestic, Ahrefs, and Search Console as well.
Hope this helps - good luck!
-
-
Hi David,
Spam scores like this are based on algorithms, so without seeing the links, it would be very difficult to advise correctly on this. There are other factors to take into account as well.
Would you like to PM me the information and I would be happy to take a look for you.
-Andy
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
-
Got Spam Score on New Sites without Building Backlinks
Hey MOZ Team, I hope you guys are fine. Actually today I'm reviewing my client site and suddenly saw that their spam score is 39. They don't have too many backlinks. They have few of them and they're not Sammy. Can you Guide me a little bit why these types of things happens. Because the site is almost new. Here's the website link: https://pmpteacher.com/
Moz Pro | | koipl0 -
How do I see all links to my site in Web Explore?
It appears that the Web Explore looks for exact matches to a page. I'd like to see all matches to any page. Will regular expressions work?
Moz Pro | | Leverage_Marketing0 -
Seomoz and site explorer completely different
seomoz and site explorer completely different results on own site and competitors on moz i am ahead in all aspects in site explorer i am way off par...why
Moz Pro | | lordmoose85450 -
Open Site Explorer Not Working on 99% of Sites
I'm trying to use Open Site Explorer, but whenever I try to I get the error message "Ouch! It Looks Like Something Went South". Interestingly, I don't have this problem when entering a very popular site like google.com, yahoo.com, bbc.co.uk. Is there a problem with the tool at the moment, or something wrong on my end?
Moz Pro | | EssexGirl1 -
Alexa Ranking Sites
I found these two sites giving my competitor link juice: http://www.webnamelist.com/alexa/Alexa_186.html http://www.list-of-domains.org/alexa/Alexa_185.html I have seen these sites before and I just dont get why they are authoritative. The funny thing is I did a search for my competitors link on the page and its not showing up, is this a problem in site explorer? Why is site explorer mentioning these sites as my competitions best links when these links do not exist on their site?
Moz Pro | | SEODinosaur0 -
I need a tool/tools to extract keywords from say 50 sites in one niche and then check the rank tor those sites
This is for telemarketing of seo services I want to have some insight into an industry before I call them could this be done with the adwords keyword tool api and then exported to excel. It would also be nice to have data on backlinks say from seo moz opensite explorer.. Its just that the research you do before you even call a potential client is so time consuming and you can never really check to see how they are ranking for there main keywords manually. We are trying to automate as much of this initial research as possible... Any Idea's Thanks
Moz Pro | | duncan2740 -
Crawling a website with redirects
Hi, I started a campaign for a website which uses multiple redirects before showing the real content. in the crawling report only one page is crawled. Is there a way to let the crawler pass the redirects to get usefull reports? The website is www.cegeka.be Thank you
Moz Pro | | Cegeka0 -
Competitive .edu Research via Open Site Explorer
I was using open site explorer and trying to figure out how my competitors are getting so many .edu links. Now I won't mention any names here but I am trying to figure out why almost all their links point to downloads of documents. Here are a few of the examples of sites I keep finding... www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/paracomp/tau/monitor/sheehan_examples/tim_context_xmpl?wiki=TailleMaximaleDesFichiersSurUnePartition/orphan www.atmos.albany.edu/facstaff/mathias/video/090926_wima_klimawandel.ivr?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.jtitle=American Journal Clinical Nutrition&rft.atitle=Problems with red meat in the WCRF2&rft.volume=89&rft.spage=1274&rft.epage=9&rft.date=2009&rft.aulast=Truswell&rft.aufirst=AS&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fwiley.com%3AOnlineLibrary faculty.unlv.edu/jensen/CEE_468/GISTutorialWorkbook/tutorial11/LandUsePgh.lpk?arrow=nws&read=24922 <colgroup><col width="3111"></colgroup>
Moz Pro | | MichealGooden0