If you've taken on a client with a high spam score, this article walks you through how to use Search Atlas to audit their backlink profile, identify the most damaging links, and take action to reduce their spam score over time. This process works for both newly onboarded clients and existing projects.
🛠️ Step-by-Step
- Create or open your client's project. From the left sidebar, navigate to Home → Classic and select your client's project, or create a new one using the Create a Project button. This ensures all audit data is scoped to the correct domain.
- Open the Site Explorer for the client's domain. In your project, navigate to the Site Explorer tool. Enter the client's root domain to pull their full backlink profile. Wait for the data to load before proceeding.
- Filter backlinks by spam score. Once the backlink data loads, look for the spam score or toxic link filter within the backlink report. Sort or filter the results to surface links with the highest spam scores first. Focus your review on links flagged as high-risk or toxic.
- Evaluate each high-risk backlink. For each flagged link, review the referring domain's metrics: spam score percentage, domain authority, anchor text, and whether the link is dofollow or nofollow. Links with a spam score above 30–40% and low domain authority are typically the highest priority for removal or disavowal.
- Export the toxic backlink list. Use the export function in the backlink report to download the flagged links as a CSV. This file will serve as the basis for your outreach and disavowal workflow.
- Attempt link removal outreach first. Contact the webmasters of the most harmful referring domains and request removal. Document your outreach attempts, as this is required if you later submit a disavowal file to Google Search Console.
- Build a disavowal file for links that cannot be removed. For links where removal outreach fails or is not feasible, compile the referring domains into a disavowal file (a plain .txt file with one domain per line, formatted as domain:example.com). Submit this file through Google Search Console under the disavowal tool for the client's property.
- Refresh your backlink data regularly. Spam scores are not static. Schedule periodic re-audits — ideally monthly — by returning to the Site Explorer and re-running the backlink report to track whether removed or disavowed links have dropped out of the profile.
✅ How to Confirm It Worked
After completing outreach and disavowal submission, confirm progress by checking the following: First, re-run the backlink report in Site Explorer and compare the number of high-spam-score referring domains against your original export — the count should decrease over time as disavowals are processed and links are removed. Second, monitor the client's overall spam score metric in the report; a downward trend over 4–8 weeks is a positive indicator that the cleanup is taking effect. Third, cross-reference in Google Search Console under Links > Top linking sites to verify that the most toxic domains are no longer prominently listed. Note that Google processes disavowal files gradually, so improvement may take several weeks to reflect in third-party spam score tools.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.