SERPTool · Docs

Domain Score, Page Score, and Spam Score

Three per-result authority signals. SERPTool pulls all three from DataForSEO and surfaces them on every SERP breakdown. If Opportunity Score is the keyword-level summary, these are the per-result detail.

Domain Score (DS)

What it is. A 0–100 estimate of how much authority a domain has accumulated across the whole site — a function of its backlink profile (quantity and quality), age, and link velocity. Directly comparable to "Domain Authority" (Moz), "Domain Rating" (Ahrefs), and similar aggregate metrics.

How to read it.

  • 0–15: effectively unranked or very new. Sites at this level rarely hold top 10 without thin-competition niches.
  • 16–40: established small sites. The sweet spot for "beatable" results.
  • 41–70: established mid-authority sites. Harder to displace but not untouchable.
  • 71–100: big brands, media, Wikipedia, Reddit. Think carefully before fighting.

The weakness threshold: DS ≤ 10 triggers the LOW_DS weakness code. Seeing several results at DS ≤ 10 in a SERP is a strong signal the keyword is underserved.

Page Score (PS)

What it is. The same idea but scoped to this specific URL rather than the whole domain. A 30-year-old newspaper has a sky-high DS, but a throwaway page on that newspaper might have PS=2 because no one has ever linked to it.

Why it matters. SERPs reward page authority more than domain authority for specific long-tail queries. A DS=80 domain with a PS=3 page is essentially ranking on brand strength alone — and that's a page you can realistically outrank with a genuinely-linked PS=20 page on a DS=25 domain.

The weakness threshold: PS ≤ 0 triggers LOW_PS. Look for SERPs where multiple results have strong DS but weak PS — classic signal of stale authority.

Spam Score (SS)

What it is. DataForSEO's 0–100 estimate of "how spammy does this domain look", based on signals like excessive link reciprocity, low-quality outbound links, thin boilerplate content, suspicious TLDs, and link-farm adjacency.

How to read it.

  • 0–20: clean. Nothing to worry about.
  • 21–49: some concerning patterns but not disqualifying.
  • 50+: actively spammy. Google typically doesn't rank these pages for long — if you see SS=60+ in a top-10 result, bet on it disappearing.

The weakness threshold: SS ≥ 50 triggers HIGH_SS. Treat results flagged HIGH_SS as temporarily ranked — they're often casualties of the next algorithm refresh.

Looking at all three together

A few patterns worth recognising in the SERP breakdown:

  • High DS + high PS + low SS — a genuinely strong result. Hard to displace.
  • High DS + low PS + low SS — a big domain coasting on brand. Very displaceable if you write better.
  • Low DS + high PS + low SS — a small site that wrote one exceptional page. Match the content depth; link acquisition is your lever.
  • Any combo + high SS — write this off as about-to-be-penalised. Its presence inflates the weakness density of the SERP.

What SERPTool displays

On the keyword detail page, the SERP Breakdown table shows DS and PS as mini-bars for instant visual comparison, plus the raw numbers. Spam Score is a column to the right of page speed. The 17 weakness columns use filled dots to indicate which signals are present per result.

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