Spam Score Checker

What Is a Website Spam Score?

A website spam score is a metric that estimates how likely a website is to be flagged or penalized by search engines for exhibiting characteristics commonly associated with low-quality or spammy websites. The score is calculated by analyzing dozens of trust signals across your site, including technical configuration, content quality, contact transparency, legal compliance, and structural patterns.

Think of a spam score as an early warning system. A high spam score does not guarantee a penalty, but it indicates that your website shares traits with sites that have been penalized or suppressed in search results. Conversely, a low spam score (high trust score) suggests your site demonstrates the characteristics of authoritative, well-maintained websites that search engines reward with higher rankings.

The concept was popularized by Moz, which introduced a spam score metric based on 27 flags that correlate with penalized websites. Our analysis goes further, evaluating 22 weighted trust signal parameters across your site's pages to produce both a trust score and a complementary spam score. The trust score and spam score always sum to 100 — if your trust score is 72, your spam score is 28.

Trust Score vs. Spam Score: Understanding the Relationship

The trust score and spam score are inversely related. A trust score of 85 means a spam score of 15 — your site exhibits strong trust signals with minimal spam characteristics. A trust score of 30 means a spam score of 70 — your site is missing many trust signals and may exhibit patterns that search engines associate with low-quality content.

The trust score is a weighted average of 22 parameters. Each parameter evaluates a specific aspect of your site and produces a score between 0 and 100. High-weight parameters like HTTPS encryption, contact information, hidden text detection, and broken links carry 5 points each, while lower-weight parameters like favicon presence and CTA button detection carry 1 point each.

The total possible weight across all 22 parameters is approximately 65. The weighted average is calculated by summing each parameter's (score multiplied by weight), dividing by the total weight, and rounding to the nearest integer. This produces a score from 0 to 100, where 100 represents perfect trust signals and 0 represents maximum spam risk.

The 22 Trust Signal Parameters Explained

Each of the 22 parameters targets a specific aspect of website trustworthiness. Understanding what each parameter measures helps you prioritize improvements for maximum impact on your score.

HTTPS Encryption (Weight: 5)

HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) encrypts data between the user's browser and your server. Google has confirmed HTTPS as a ranking factor since 2014, and Chrome marks HTTP-only sites as "Not Secure." Sites without HTTPS signal a lack of basic security investment, which search engines and users interpret as a trust deficit. This is one of the easiest and most impactful improvements you can make.

Contact Information (Weight: 5 each for Email, Phone, Address)

Legitimate businesses publish their contact details. Search engines view the absence of any contact information — email address, phone number, or physical address — as a red flag associated with spam or scam websites. Google's Quality Rater Guidelines specifically instruct evaluators to check whether a website provides adequate contact information. Our tool detects email addresses (both mailto: links and text patterns), phone numbers (tel: links, structured data, and contextual patterns near labels like "Phone" or "Call"), and physical addresses (structured address elements and common formatting patterns).

Hidden Text Detection (Weight: 5)

Hidden text is content that is invisible to users but readable by search engine crawlers. Common techniques include setting text color to match the background, using CSS properties like display:none,visibility:hidden, font-size:0, or text-indent:-9999px, and positioning elements off-screen. Google explicitly prohibits hidden text as a form of cloaking, which can result in manual penalties. Our tool scans for these CSS patterns while correctly excluding legitimate accessibility patterns like sr-only and visually-hidden classes, which are used to provide content for screen readers.

Keyword Stuffing Detection (Weight: 3)

Keyword stuffing is the practice of unnaturally repeating specific keywords to manipulate search rankings. While some keyword repetition is natural, excessive density signals manipulation. Our tool analyzes word frequency in your visible text content (excluding common stop words like "the," "and," "is") and flags any non-stop word that exceeds 3% of total content as potential stuffing. Natural content typically keeps individual word density well below 2%. Google's algorithms have become increasingly sophisticated at detecting keyword stuffing and may demote pages that practice it.

Schema Markup (Weight: 4)

Schema markup (structured data) helps search engines understand the content and context of your pages. It enables rich snippets in search results — star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, product prices, event dates, and more. Websites with schema markup demonstrate technical sophistication and provide better search experiences. Our tool checks for JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa formats, which are the three standard ways to implement structured data.

Social Media Links (Weight: 3)

Legitimate businesses maintain social media profiles and link to them from their website. The absence of social media links can signal a thin or fraudulent operation. Our tool checks for links to major platforms including Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, and Threads. The presence of social profiles corroborates that your business has a real-world presence beyond your website.

Common Spam Indicators and How to Fix Them

If your website has a high spam score, there are concrete steps you can take to improve it. The most effective strategy is to address high-weight parameters first, as they have the largest impact on your overall score.

How Google Evaluates Website Quality

Google uses a combination of algorithmic signals and human quality ratings to evaluate websites. The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines — a 170+ page document used by thousands of human evaluators — provides detailed instructions for assessing website quality. Several key concepts from these guidelines directly relate to the trust signals our tool measures.

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is the central framework Google uses to evaluate content quality. Trustworthiness is considered the most important component, and it encompasses many of the signals our tool checks: Does the site have clear contact information? Is there an about page explaining who runs the site? Are there privacy policies? Is the connection encrypted with HTTPS?

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) pages — those that could impact a person's health, financial stability, or safety — are held to the highest quality standards. For YMYL sites, missing trust signals like contact information, author credentials, or legal disclosures can have an outsized negative impact on rankings. Even non-YMYL sites benefit from strong trust signals, but the penalties for missing them are less severe.

Google's core algorithm updates (such as the Helpful Content Update and the various Core Updates released throughout 2024 and 2025) increasingly target sites with thin content, poor user experience, and missing trust signals. Websites that proactively build trust through transparency, quality content, and proper technical implementation are better positioned to maintain or improve their rankings through these updates.

Spam Score vs. Domain Authority: Key Differences

Domain Authority (DA) and Spam Score measure different aspects of a website's SEO profile. Domain Authority predicts how well a site will rank based on its backlink profile — the quantity, quality, and diversity of other websites linking to it. Spam Score predicts how likely a site is to be penalized based on its on-site trust signals.

A website can have a high Domain Authority but also a high Spam Score if it has accumulated quality backlinks but neglected on-site trust signals. For example, a news site with thousands of editorial backlinks might still have a high spam score if it lacks a privacy policy, has broken outbound links, or uses hidden text techniques. Conversely, a new website with few backlinks (low DA) might have a low spam score if it implements all trust signals correctly from the start.

For a comprehensive SEO strategy, you should optimize both metrics. Build quality backlinks to improve Domain Authority, and implement trust signals to reduce Spam Score. Together, these create a strong foundation that protects your site from algorithmic penalties and positions it for long-term ranking success.

Internal Link Ratio and Site Structure

The ratio of internal links to total links on a page is an important trust signal. A healthy website has a strong internal linking structure that helps users navigate between related pages and helps search engines discover and index all your content. Pages with very few internal links relative to external links may signal thin content, affiliate spam, or a lack of site depth.

Our tool evaluates the internal link ratio by comparing the number of links pointing to pages on the same domain versus links pointing to external domains. A ratio above 50% internal links is generally considered healthy, though the ideal ratio varies by page type. Navigation pages, homepages, and category pages should have a high internal link ratio, while blog posts and articles may naturally include more external references.

To improve your internal link ratio, ensure every page on your site links to at least 3-5 other relevant pages on your domain. Use descriptive anchor text that helps both users and search engines understand what the linked page is about. Implement breadcrumb navigation, related post sections, and contextual internal links within your content body.

Meta Tags, Headings, and Content Quality Signals

Properly structured meta tags, heading hierarchies, and image alt attributes contribute to your trust score. These elements demonstrate attention to technical SEO detail and improve accessibility for all users, including those using screen readers. Search engines use meta descriptions to generate snippets in search results, heading tags to understand content structure, and alt attributes to index and understand images.

Every page should have a unique title tag (50-60 characters), a compelling meta description (120-160 characters), a single H1 heading that clearly states the page's topic, and a logical heading hierarchy (H2 for major sections, H3 for subsections). Images should have descriptive alt attributes that explain the image content — not keyword-stuffed strings, but genuine descriptions that would make sense to a visually impaired user.

Our tool checks whether your pages include these elements and evaluates their quality. Pages missing meta descriptions, using duplicate titles, or lacking alt attributes on images will score lower on these parameters.

How Often Should You Check Your Spam Score?

We recommend checking your spam score at least once per month, and always after major site changes such as redesigns, CMS migrations, plugin updates, or content overhauls. These changes can inadvertently introduce issues like broken links, missing legal pages, removed contact information, or new hidden text patterns that increase your spam score.

For high-traffic sites or YMYL content (health, finance, legal), more frequent monitoring is advisable. Consider checking weekly during periods of active development or after Google core algorithm updates, which can change how certain signals are weighted. If your rankings drop suddenly, a spam score check can help identify whether on-site trust signal issues might be contributing to the decline.

Track your spam score over time to identify trends. A gradually increasing spam score might indicate accumulating broken links, outdated content, or configuration drift. A sudden spike could point to a hacked site, accidentally removed pages, or a deployment that broke your SSL certificate or removed your privacy policy.

Frequently Asked Questions About Spam Score