Hey, My website Spam score increased suddenly. We had 1% spam score, Now it's 50%, We don't have many spammy website links, spammy links already disavowed. Why the spam score increased. After checking the 27 signals we found we blocked Google Fonts API, Is this the issue? When is the date of the next update in the spam score? Waiting for an Expert opinion. Thanks in Advance Neethu

Hey Moz Community, Link Explorer is now open to the public! Everyone can access it via a subscription or a free Moz ‘Community’ account. As you may know by now, the brand-new Link Explorer tool is primed to replace Open Site Explorer as Moz’s link building and analysis tool. The Link Explorer project is the result of an incredible amount of perseverance and hard work by the team, and we’re proud to be able to finally share it with you — we know it’s going to revolutionize how you approach link building and make your job easier. You can read more about the tool here in Sarah Bird’s announcement post. Because Link Explorer improves on almost every aspect of Open Site Explorer, the metrics have improved, too. That means you’re likely going to see some Domain Authority and Page Authority discrepancies between OSE’s index and Link Explorer’s index. We definitely suggest you use the new DA/PA from Link Explorer, as they’re more accurate and refresh daily rather than monthly, as was the case with OSE’s index. However, we also realize that many of you use these metrics to report to your clients and colleagues, and a sudden change or fluctuation could potentially make your job harder. Which DA is the real DA? The new DA is based on a much larger index that has many improvements, several of which are designed to make the index more like Google’s than ever before. You should consider moving towards the new DA (and the old DA won’t be updated after April 26th 2018, so the sooner the better). While there will be fluctuations as we improve the model and add features to the index, we expect it to remain largely stable and to be a far more accurate picture of a site’s authority according to how it’s seen by Google. Why is Link Explorer’s DA/PA considered better than OSE’s, and which should I trust? The larger link index with improved crawl selection allows us to produce a stronger model that includes a much larger proportion of the web. That being said, DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Is Domain Authority/Page Authority an absolute score or a relative one? Both DA and PA are relative to the Internet as a whole. If Facebook acquired a billion new links, everyone’s PA and DA would drop relative to Facebook. Because of this, it’s always best to look at PA and DA in comparison to your competitors. What does a drop/raise in DA mean in Link Explorer vs OSE? How can I explain this to my clients when I’m reporting it? DA and PA should always be considered in the context of your competitors. A drop or raise in PA or DA relative to the old OSE is of little concern if your competitors saw similar movement. Reporting that your site has moved from a DA of 45 to a DA of 42 doesn’t tell the whole story, but reporting that your site has a DA of 42 while your main competitor moved from a 43 to a 37 shows that, relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs, your site has significantly more authority and ranking power. What’s happening to MozTrust and MozRank and why, and what should I replace those with? The improvements to our DA/PA and Spam Score metrics now now account for more important nuances in helping you determine one site’s ability to rank higher than another. Because they no longer correlate with Google’s ranking model as well as they used to, MozRank and MozTrust are being deprecated for better metrics. Users should rely on Page Authority, Domain Authority, and Spam Score to determine the importance and quality of pages, domains, and links. I have historical data I use to help my clients benchmark their progress. What do I do now that DA is calculated differently? You should annotate any KPI changes referencing the change in DA and PA. However, most importantly, you should compare those changes to your competitors, as this will best show how strong your site’s authority is relative to the sites you’re competing against in the SERPs. We take updating our metrics very seriously, and our last major update to the model was 7 years ago. Users of Domain Authority and Page Authority can expect us to continue to produce steady, reliable metrics for the long haul, and only make changes to these metrics when we believe the benefits dramatically outweigh the stability of the metric. Do you have any questions about the new metrics? Anticipating a tough time reporting changes to clients or bosses? Metrics, features or functionality missing that you would want to see? Let us know in the thread, and we’ll work to find a good answer for you. Hope you enjoy the new Link Explorer product and the amazing new link index powering it. We are very excited to provide this valuable data to our community and customers.

I've read through the forum, but I'm confused as to what "Number of Linking Root Domains" means in the Linking Domains report. For example, if the root domain is Moz.com and the number is 135,000 does that mean there are 135,000 links from Moz pointing back to my site or does it mean there are 135,000 sites linking back to Moz? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

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? DrokMbP