Spam score question on shortened URLs

[Overthet0p]

Hello,

Our agency owns a URL, thejoint.co, specifically for url shortening. There is no content on this url. When we post client's content to social media channels, we use the shortener which 301s to the normal URL. Now, when I use Moz Open Site Explorer to view a client's webpage (http://chiropractorphoenix-thejoint.com/scottsdale/shea/ or chiropractorglendaleca-thejoint.com), I see thejoint.co with a spam score of 9. I'm looking for clarification if this is a real problem in regards to my clients website health? If so, is there any way to keep the shortner without the negative effects?

Thank you,

P.S. Does this mean Moz's Spam tool also recognizes Bit.ly and other similar services as spam?

[randfish]

Hi Overthet0p - no, I wouldn't worry about the URL shortener at all. Remember that spam score doesn't indicate whether something is necessarily spam in Google's eyes - it just tries to show features that are correlated with things we've seen Google penalize/ban. So, a Spam Score of 9/17 means that we saw ~72% of sites with that many triggers get penalties/bans in Google. But, that also means 28% of sites we saw with 9/17 flags had no penalties. If you've manually checked the site and feel it's not a problem, changes are it's fine!