If you've onboarded a client with a high spam score, Search Atlas provides tools to audit their backlink profile and identify harmful links. This article outlines the general approach to investigating and addressing toxic backlinks using the platform's backlink features.
📍 Where to Find It
Navigate to the Backlinks section of the platform to access backlink research and analysis tools for any domain.
🛠️ General Approach
- Open the backlink analysis tool: Enter your client's root domain (e.g., example.com) and run an analysis to pull up their full backlink profile.
- Review the spam score: Once the report loads, look for the spam score information associated with the domain. Note the figure so you have a baseline to compare against later.
- Isolate toxic links: In the backlink table, sort or filter by spam score to surface the most harmful referring domains. Focus on those with the highest spam scores as your primary targets for remediation.
- Examine each toxic referring domain: Review the linking pages individually. Consider whether the site has real content, whether anchor text looks manipulative (e.g., exact-match commercial keywords in bulk), and whether the page has an unusually high number of outbound links. These signals help confirm whether a link is genuinely harmful.
- Compile the toxic link list: Use any available export option within the backlink tool to compile the list of harmful referring domains. You'll need this for your disavow file.
- Build and submit a disavow file: Format the toxic domains as a plain-text disavow file and submit it via Google Search Console under the Links section. This instructs Google to ignore those links when evaluating your client's site.
- Identify and protect strong backlinks: Also review low-spam, high-authority links in the backlink report. Document these so they aren't accidentally included in the disavow file and can serve as benchmarks for future link-building efforts.
✅ How to Confirm Progress
Spam score reduction is not instant — it reflects how link-analysis tools re-crawl and reprocess a backlink profile over time. Re-run the backlink report on the same client domain periodically after submitting the disavow file and compare the new spam score to your original baseline to track improvement.
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.