How does spammy linked site have zero spam score?

[usDragons]

I came across a law firm site with hundreds of horrible spam links to it. Of the 3330 links, all but 231 links have anchor text that has to do with "jordan 11s for sale".

I'm trying to see how useful the moz spam score is, but clearly it's not reliable if this site has a score of zero. Many of the obviously spammy sites linking to it also have low to zero spam scores, although there are plenty in the 5-10 range. (see attached image). I also noticed that many sites were legit sites, but if you look at the source code, there's tons of hidden spam links in the code (e.g., www.chickasawgardens.net)

Why would this site have a zero spam score? If you're curious, put it into open site explorer and have a look. It's a law firm based in Pennsylvania, most anchor text has to do with jordan sneakers and most links are foreign: penn-criminallawyers.com

Is the spam score too lenient? Is the moz tool unable to find spam links coming from legitimate sites with hidden spam links?

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[donford]

Hi,

You may also want to check the domain variations. http://penn-criminallawyers.com/ and http://www.penn-criminallawyers.com/

If you look at the www version you will see a spam score of 4/10. You'll need to make sure you set the filter to "this root domain"

It could be that at some point the website used the www but have since switched to no www. There are some inconsistency like that with the tool. Technically "www" and "no www" are 2 different domains, in practicality we use them interchangeably.

Hope this helps,

Don

[JordanRailsback]

Hi there! 
Don is absolutely right that spam score values varying by subdomain, as that's how we make distinctions for the metric.

With that being said, spam score of a given subdomain is not particularly easily influenced by the types of sites that are linking to it. Most of the 17 possible spam flags (which can be viewed here: https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/spam-analysis/flags?subdomain=www.penn-criminallawyers.com) are reflective of on-site factors within the subdomain itself. So, while I agree that spam score is not particularly well-adjusted to speak to the fact that http://www.penn-criminallawyers.com/ has some serious issues with their inbound links, it's worth noting that they didn't necessarily have to have cultivated all of those backlinks for themselves. I'm certainly not trying to go down the rabbit hole of spam conspiracy theories, but simply accounting for the fact that anyone can create a link to any site (unless disavows are involved), and it could be rash to judge a subdomain's "spammyness" based purely on their inbound external link profile.

Spam score is based on these 17 flags based on correlation (not causation) research that was done by Moz's data scientists, and it also makes the acknowledgement that there will be penalized sites with low spam , as well as non-penalized sites with a high spam score. For more context on that, I'd highly recommend that anyone looking into using spam score watch this explanation from Rand on the topic: https://moz.com/blog/understanding-and-applying-mozs-spam-score-metric-whiteboard-friday

To clarify, am I advocating that http://www.penn-criminallawyers.com/ is not a spammy site based on what spam score says? Nope. I'm not even speaking to that topic at all. For all I know, it certainly could be (and maybe I'm even inclined to think it is).

Am I saying that spam score is a value you should take at face value without doing any digging into the specific subdomains, themselves? Certainly not. I would stress doing serious research any time you're looking into spam, credibility or disavowing; it's simply there to serve as a potential source of guiding information.

Hope this helps!