What is a Spammy Website? Conducting a Website Spam Check in 2023
Have you done a website spam check lately? Your website is the digital face of your business. A well-maintained website can not only attract and engage visitors and grow your revenue, it can also serve as a guest communication tool or an informative resource for the community. However, just as a good looking and optimized…
Carissa Krause | Last updated February 28, 2025
Have you done a website spam check lately? Your website is the digital face of your business. A well-maintained website can not only attract and engage visitors and grow your revenue, it can also serve as a guest communication tool or an informative resource for the community.
However, just as a good looking and optimized website can boost your reputation, a spammy one can tarnish it. As the online landscape becomes more prevalent and impactful, it’s important to understand the implications of spammy websites and how you can keep your online presence clean and reputable.
What is a Spammy Website?
A spammy website is one that engages in unethical, manipulative, or deceptive practices to gain an unfair advantage in search engine rankings, attract unsuspecting visitors, or deceive users for malicious purposes.
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These harmful practices can include:
- Black-hat SEO
- Keyword stuffing
- Irrelevant content
- Hidden texts or links
- Use of malware
- Fake reviews
- Phishing
Users encountering spammy websites are likely to lose trust, have a poor user experience, and may associate the brand with deceptive business practices. Spam on a website may also result in lower rankings on SERPs, reduced organic traffic, and even receive penalties.
Conducting a Website Spam Check
Regular Content Audit
Review your website’s content regularly. Look for instances of keyword stuffing, irrelevant content, or hidden text. Quality content is informative, engaging, and relevant.
Check Your Spam Score with SEO Tools
SEO tools, like Moz’s Link Explorer (formerly Open Site Explorer) and Spam Score metrics, can scan your website, flagging for potential spam issues that could affect your Spam Score. SEO tools can identify keyword stuffing, hidden text, and other black-hat SEO practices.
Using Link Explorer and Spam Score metrics, we suggest performing a website spam check to potentially uncover issues that might be affecting your website’s performance.
How does your website compare to what SEO tools and Google would consider a “spam” site?
| SPAM FACTOR | RATIO* | REASON |
| No Contact Info | 11.8 | Quality websites and real businesses have prominent contact information such as email, social profiles, and addresses. |
| Small proportion of branded links | 8.5 | The natural way for websites to link to you are through branded anchor text, not keyword rich anchor text. |
| Domain name with numerals | 7.5 | Spam websites often include multiple numbers because the domain names are automatically generated. |
| Large site with few links | 5.7 | Large quality websites will naturally attract a large number of links to it. |
| Low number of pages | 5.5 | Quality sites tend to have more pages than just one or two. |
| Low number of internal links | 4.9 | Quality websites will link heavily to other related pages on the site through navigation or content links, unlike spammy websites that are more likely to link to external websites. |
| Domain name length | 4.9 | Spammy websites often have very long domain names to accommodate keyword stuffing or differentiate from other related, equally spammy domains. |
| Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed domains | 4.6 | Quality sites will have a good balance of both Follow and Nofollow links, not just Follow links. |
| Thin Content | 3.9 | Quality websites will have a balanced ratio of page specific content to navigational content. |
| Anchor text heavy page | 3.9 | Quality websites tend to have more content and less outgoing links and anchor text. |
| External links in navigation | 2.8 | Quality websites tend to have a navigation, sidebar and footer with links to pages on the site, unlike spammy sites that have external spam links on website’s navigation. |
| Low site link diversity | 2.6 | Quality sites will have a wide diversity of links from a number of different domains. |
| Large number of external links | 2.6 | Quality websites often have fewer links going out to other websites, unlike spammy websites that link heavily to other sites. |
| Top Level Domain associated with spam domains | 2.4 | Quality websites are not associated with spammy domains. |
| Site mark-up is abnormally small | 1.3 | Quality websites will invest in both content and rich markup like HTML, JavaScript, etc, to improve user experience. |
* Example: 5.7 means websites with this are 5.7x more likely to be spam than a site without it.
Spam Tolerance, Score, Malware & More
What’s Your Spam Website Tolerance?
The tool’s creators calculated the probability of spam based on the number of flags your site may trigger. Here’s how their spam check might rank your website:
- 0-4 factors: less than 7.5% chance of spam
- 5 – 7 factors: 11.4 – 30.6% chance of spam
- 8 – 10 factors: 56.8 – 77.3% chance of spam
- 11 – 13 factors: 87.3 – 98% chance of spam
- 14+ factors: 100% chance of spam.
What’s Considered a High Spam Score?
- Low Spam Score: 1%-30%
- Medium Spam Score: 31%-60%
- High Spam Score: 61%-100%
Website Spam Check for Malware
Regularly scan your website for malware using security plugins or online scanning services. This step is important for safeguarding your users’ devices and data.
Verify Reviews and Testimonials
If you feature reviews or testimonials on your website, make sure they are genuine and authentic.
Protect Against Phishing
Implement security measures to protect against phishing attacks, such as secure login systems and email verification processes.
Educate Your Team
Educate your team about spammy websites and the importance of maintaining a clean online presence and ethical online marketing practices.
Stay Informed
Staying informed about anti-spam laws, like CASL in Canada, is essential for legal compliance.
Website Spam Indicators
Now that you recognize the need to conduct a website spam check, it’s important to have a clear understanding and avoidance of factors that could flag spam on a website.
Some common indications of spam are:
- Limited presence of contact information
- Zero branded links
- Suspicious domain names
- Low-quality content, irrelevant content, scraped content, or duplicate content
- A high number of low-quality backlinks
- Slow loading times or a poor user experience
- Excessive, intrusive, misleading ads
- Many pop-ups or pop-unders
- Titles and meta descriptions that promise one thing but deliver something unrelated
- Fake reviews and testimonials
- Unsolicited email communications
- Inactive or fake social media profiles
- Lack of privacy policy
- Overuse of capitalization and symbols
- Failure to adhere to relevant laws, such as anti-spam regulations or copyright infringement
- Lack of clear information about the website’s purpose, mission, or ownership
Website Spam Check Conclusion
A spammy website can harm your online reputation, user trust, and even website security. Regularly conducting a website spam check and maintaining ethical online practices is essential for businesses of all sizes. Your website should be credible and valuable, not a source of frustration for users. By keeping your online presence spam-free, you’ll build trust, attract more visitors, and foster long-lasting relationships with your customers. So, have you done a website spam check lately?
Don’t Get Labeled as a Spammy Website!
If you have read through the above list of spam indicators and think your website could potentially be considered a spammy website, give our SEO experts a call at 1-888-562-1750 or contact us today.
We offer full SEO Website Audits, including in-depth website spam checks, thorough analysis of your site, and recommendations on next steps as a result of any findings.
Carissa Krause
Carissa Krause is a Digital Marketing and Project Specialist at 1st on the List. Over the last 13+ years she has worked in our Abbotsford office with clients on a wide range of projects that include areas like local SEO, project reporting, backlink profile review, content development, strategic planning, and more. Whatever the project may be Carissa focuses on achieving greater efficiencies and putting plans into action. When away from her desk you’ll likely find her drinking all the coffee while sitting on the floor driving cars with her three young boys.
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