You can check any website's Spam Score for free in Moz Link Explorer: create a free Moz Community account, verify your email, enter the domain and read the score on the right. Free accounts get 10 queries a month. The score runs from 1% to 100%: Moz calls 1-30% low, 31-60% medium and 61-100% high, and it also shows what share of the site's linking domains fall in each band.
The usual reason for checking: a site has offered you a link, or you are about to pitch one, and you want to know whether it looks like a site Google has penalised. The second reason is "what's my spam score?", often after a client or a link partner mentioned yours. The steps are the same for both.
How to check spam score in Moz Link Explorer for free
Moz's free account is the only no-cost way to see the actual Spam Score, because Spam Score is Moz's own metric. According to the Link Explorer page, a free Moz Community account includes Domain Authority, Page Authority, Spam Score, link and linking-domain counts, anchor text and recently discovered and lost linking domains, with 10 queries per month.
- Open Moz Link Explorer and enter the root domain you want to check (for example
example.com, not a single URL, unless you want one page's links). - Create a free Moz Community account when prompted and verify your email address. Moz says this step is there to keep automated tools out.
- On the results page, read Spam Score on the right-hand side. It is a percentage from 1% to 100%.
- Below it, look at the Spam Score breakdown: the share of linking domains pointing at this site that fall into the low, medium and high bands. In Moz's own example, 86.7% of a site's linking domains sat in the low band while the site itself scored 4%.
- Scroll to the inbound-links table, which Moz sorts by Spam Score, highest first. This is the list to open when you are vetting a site's neighbourhood rather than the site itself.
Ten queries go quickly if you check every prospect. Check your own site once a month and keep the rest of the quota for the link partners that pass your other filters, so the metric lookup is the last step rather than the first. How to vet a link swap partner sets out the order.
How to read the number once you have it
Spam Score is a probability about a group of sites, not a verdict on this one. Moz's Spam Score help page defines it as "the percentage of sites with similar features to the site you're researching which we've found to be penalized or banned by Google", based on a model that identified 27 common features among penalised sites.
| Spam Score | Moz's label | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| 1% to 30% | Low | Treat as normal. Most ordinary websites sit here |
| 31% to 60% | Medium | Open the site and look. Small, new and thin sites score here for structural reasons |
| 61% to 100% | High | Walk away from the link unless a manual check shows a clearly legitimate site |
Moz says a high score "doesn't mean this site is necessarily spammy" and is "a sign that you should do some more investigation into the quality and relevance of this site". That matches how to use it in practice: it cuts a long list down, it does not make the final call. What is Spam Score in SEO goes through the 27 signals and the two versions of the metric.
What's my spam score, and should I worry?
Check your own domain the same way, then read the result against the site's age and size before reacting. Moz's guidance is that if you have not had any penalties, a low or medium score on your own site is not a cause for concern. The score is built from your site's own features (page count, HTTPS, contact details, title lengths and so on), not from the links pointing at you, so a six-page site on a new domain can score in the 30s while being perfectly clean.
If your score is high and you want it lower, the fix is on your own pages, not in the disavow tool. How to reduce your Spam Score lists the signals you can change.
Other free ways to check a site's risk
Spam Score itself is only in Moz, but two free metrics from other vendors answer the same question from a different direction.
Majestic Trust Flow and Citation Flow
Majestic's free backlink checker shows a site's Trust Flow (link quality) and Citation Flow (link volume). A site with high Citation Flow and very low Trust Flow has many links and few trusted ones, which is the pattern a manufactured profile leaves. Trust Flow and Citation Flow explained covers how to read the ratio.
Semrush Toxicity Score
Semrush's Backlink Audit gives a Toxicity Score per linking domain. It is calculated differently from Spam Score and the two often disagree about the same site, which is useful: when Moz, Majestic and Semrush all flag a domain, three independent models agree. The free Semrush account limits how much of the audit you can see, so treat it as a cross-check rather than the first stop.
A manual look at the site
The check no tool replaces: open the site, read a page, look at who writes it and where its outbound links go. Links to gambling, pharmacy or crypto pages from an unrelated blog are the clearest sign of a site that sells placements, and a site with a high authority score and no visible traffic is the second. What is a bad backlink has the full list.
When the Spam Score lookup is worth doing
Three moments, in order of how often they come up.
Before you accept or trade a link
Run the partner's domain and the page the link would sit on. A medium score on a small, relevant blog is fine; a high score, or a breakdown where most of the partner's own linking domains are high-risk, is not. On Backlinkster the partner's domain is visible before you agree to anything, so this check takes one query, and each swap is verified by API after both articles are live.
After a client or partner asks about yours
Check it, read it against the bands above, and if it is medium or low with no penalty in Search Console, say so. The Manual Actions report in Search Console is the only authoritative answer about penalties; Spam Score is a model.
When auditing a backlink profile
Export the inbound-links table sorted by Spam Score and use it to decide which linking sites to open, not which to disavow. Google's own disavow guidance says most sites never need the tool. How to audit your backlink profile covers the rest of the audit.
Frequently asked questions
How can I check the spam score of a website for free?
Create a free Moz Community account, open Moz Link Explorer, enter the domain and read the Spam Score on the right of the results. The free account includes 10 queries a month along with Domain Authority, Page Authority and linking-domain counts.
What is a good spam score?
Moz labels 1% to 30% low, 31% to 60% medium and 61% to 100% high. Most ordinary sites sit in the low band. A medium score on a small or new site is common and, in Moz's words, not a cause for concern if the site has had no penalty.
Is there a spam score checker that does not need an account?
Not for Moz's Spam Score itself, which requires a free login. Majestic's free backlink checker shows Trust Flow and Citation Flow without an account, and the gap between those two scores flags the same kind of risky link profile.
Does Google use spam score?
No. Spam Score is a Moz metric built from Moz's crawl and model. Google has no access to it and does not rank by it, which is why a high score is a reason to investigate rather than evidence of a penalty.
How often does Moz update spam score?
Moz recalculates the score when it updates its link index, so a site's score can change without anything on the site changing. Check at the same point each month if you are tracking your own.
Can I check spam score in bulk for free?
Not on the free plan. Moz notes that export limits depend on your subscription level, and the 10 free queries are per domain lookup. For a long prospect list, do the manual filters first and spend the queries on the shortlist.
The bottom line
Checking Spam Score costs nothing: a free Moz account, 10 lookups a month, and the number is on the right of the screen. Read it as a probability, use the three bands to decide which sites to open rather than which to reject, and remember that Google never sees it. For your own site, a medium score with a clean Manual Actions report means nothing needs fixing.
Related: What is Spam Score in SEO? · How to reduce your Spam Score · Trust Flow and Citation Flow explained · What is a bad backlink? · How to vet a link swap partner · Check domain rating and DA for free