We have enriched Backlinks API with the Spam Score metric, and from now on our API can evaluate the “spamminess” of each returned backlink or group of backlinks.

The new metric can be found in the following endpoints:

• Summary;
• History;
• Backlinks;
• Anchors;
• Domain Pages;
• Referring Domains;
• Domain Intersection;
• Page Intersection.
• Bulk Spam Score.

What is Spam Score?

Spam Score is DataForSEO’s proprietary metric indicating the spam level of a page, group of pages, or an entire domain (depending on the endpoint you’re using). It can take values from 0% to 100%:

A score of 0%-30% is considered a low Spam Score.

A score of 31%-60% is considered a medium Spam Score.

A score of 61%-100% is considered a high Spam Score.

The score is calculated based on 18 signals, which are listed in the table below.

How Spam Score of a page is calculated

To calculate the Spam Score for a page, the API considers various signals: from whether the page has contact information to which protocol it uses (HTTP or HTTPS). Below we list all the signals and show their impact on the overall score.

Signal	Impact on the score
Domain name length (including TLD) is less than 3, equal to 3, or greater than 20 characters	+10%
Main domain contains more than or equal to 2 numeric characters	+15%
Subdomain contains more than or equal to 2 numeric characters	+20%
Domain contains one of the TLDs associated with spammy websites* (see the list below)	+20%
Page doesn’t contain link or script tags from trustworthy sources (Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter) inside the head element	+20%
Page contains link or script tags from trustworthy sources (Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter) inside the head element	-(number of sources * 5)
Page contains social meta tags	-15%
Page contains contact info	-20%
Page utilizes non-local rel canonical tag	+20%
Website uses the insecure HTTP protocol instead of HTTPS	+30%
Page doesn’t have a title tag or its title tag is less than 30 or greater than 65 characters	+5%
Page has a title tag and its title tag is greater than 30 or less than 65 characters	-5%
Page doesn’t have a description tag or its decsription tag is less than 40 or greater than 200 characters	+5%
Page has a description tag and its description tag is greater than 40 or less than 200 characters	-5%
Page has more than 10 keywords in the meta keywords tag	+15%
Page has more than 100 external links	+20%
Page has more than 500 internal links	+15%
Ratio of external links to internal links is greater than 3	+15%

*TLDs associated with spammy websites:

.surf, .cn, .cfd, .ga, .biz, .hk, .pw, .icu, .top, .tw, .gq, .work, .cf, .cam, .ml, .bit.ly, .bit.do, .ow.ly, .goo.gl, .x.co, .rebrand.ly, .tinyurl.com, .t.co, .is.gd, .ht.ly, .xyz, .best

How Spam Score of a domain is calculated

When it comes to calculating the Spam Score for a group of pages (backlinks_spam_score) or an entire domain (target_spam_score), the API calculates the Spam Score for each individual page and then finds the average.

For example, if a domain has 5 pages with 30%, 45%, 20%, 10%, and 70% Spam Scores, then its Spam Score will be: (30 + 45 + 20 + 10 + 70) / 5 = 35%.