Postmaster Tools dashboards have detailed information about spam rate, reputation, message authentication, and delivery errors. This information helps you meet the sender requirements described in our Email sender guidelines.
The Postmaster Tools home page lists all the domains you’ve added, the date each domain was added, and each domain’s verification status. For more information about a domain’s verification status, click the tool tip in the Status column. Use the 3 menus at the top of the Postmaster Tools window to select:
- Domain: Select any verified domain. Domains that aren’t verified don’t appear in the menu.
- Dashboard type: Select any of the Postmaster Tools dashboards.
- Time range: Select a time range for the dashboard data. You can select the last 7, 30, 60, 90, or 120 days.
To set up Postmaster Tools for the first time, visit Monitor outgoing email with Postmaster Tools.
Postmaster Tools dashboards overview
The table below has a short a description of each dashboard. From this short description, you can go to detailed information about the dashboard.
| Dashboard | Description |
|---|---|
| Compliance status | The Compliance status dashboard displays your compliance with the email sender requirements described in our Email sender guidelines. |
| Spam rate | The Spam Rate dashboard displays the percent of your messages that recipients manually mark as spam in Gmail. |
| IP Reputation | The IP Reputation dashboard displays the quality rating for the IP addresses you use to send email. |
| Domain Reputation | The Domain Reputation dashboard displays the quality rating for the domains you use to send email. |
| Feedback loop |
The Feedback Loop dashboard displays messages that recipients have marked as spam, displayed by email campaign. |
| Authentication |
The Authentication dashboard shows the percent of your email that passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication. |
| Encryption |
The Encryption dashboard shows the percent of your email that’s sent over an encrypted SSL or TLS connection. |
| Delivery errors |
The Delivery Errors dashboard displays the percent of all authenticated messages (SPF or DKIM) that were rejected or that temporarily failed, compared to all authenticated messages. |
Postmaster Tools dashboards
The Compliance status dashboard is available to all email senders, including bulk senders, that send messages to personal Gmail accounts. A bulk sender is any sender that sends about 5,000 messages or more to Gmail accounts in a 24-hour period.
Use the Compliance status dashboard to verify that your outgoing email complies with the sender requirements in our Email sender guidelines.
Keep in mind:
- Dashboard data applies only to messages sent to personal Gmail accounts.
- Dashboard data used to determine compliance status isn’t real-time data. When you make updates to meet sender requirements, your changes aren't reflected in the dashboard immediately. Typically, dashboard data is updated within 24 hours but can take longer.
- The Compliance status dashboard data applies to primary domains only, not to subdomains. The dashboard uses data from subdomains to determine compliance, but provides status for primary domains only. For example, if you add the subdomain mail.solarmora.com to Postmaster Tools, the Compliance status dashboard shows data for the entire solarmora.com domain.
- To protect the privacy of Gmail users, the dashboard might not include all data on days when outgoing email volume is low. This can impact what you see in the dashboard.
The Compliance status dashboard provides compliance information for the sender requirements in our Email sender guidelines. Some requirements apply to bulk senders only.
Compliance status for all senders
- SPF and DKIM authentication
- DNS records
- Message formatting
- Encryption
- User-reported spam rate
Compliance status for bulk senders only
- DMARC authentication
- One-click unsubscribe
- Honor-unsubscribe
There are 2 possible states for each requirement in the dashboard:
- Compliant: Your email system is correctly set up to meet the requirement, and your messages meet the requirements in Email sender guidelines. No action is needed. To get details about the requirement, click the dashboard tooltip next to the requirement name.
- Needs work: You must update your email system to meet the requirement, and verify that outgoing messages meet the requirements in Email sender guidelines. The status column describes what actions to take to meet the requirement. After you take steps to resolve any issues and meet the requirement, it can take 7 days or longer for updates be reflected in the dashboard.
Troubleshoot compliance status issues
| Issue | Possible causes | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| I made updates based on information in the Compliance Status dashboard but the status for my domain hasn’t changed and still shows Needs work. | The Compliance status dashboard uses a rolling data average that’s gathered over multiple days, and so your domain status might not update immediately. | Check the Compliance status dashboard after 7 days to see updated information. |
| The information about my domain in the Compliance status dashboard conflicts with information about the same domain in the other Postmaster Tools dashboards. |
The Compliance status dashboard uses a rolling data average that’s gathered over multiple days, and so your domain status might not update immediately. The Compliance status dashboard uses slightly different datasets than other dashboards to calculate compliance. So, data can vary slightly across dashboards. The Compliance status dashboard shows compliance for primary domains only. However, data from both primary and subdomains are used to determine compliance for the primary domain. For example, if you added the subdomain mail.solarmora.com to Postmaster Tools, the Compliance status dashboard shows data for the entire solarmora.com primary domain. |
Check the Compliance status dashboard after 7 days to see updated information. For data about subdomains, check Postmaster Tools dashboards other than the Compliance Status dashboard. |
The spam rate is the percent of your messages that are delivered to engaged recipient's Inbox and then marked as spam by the recipient. Messages sent to spam and then marked as not spam by recipients count toward messages delivered directly to the inbox. Postmaster Tools displays the spam rate of DKIM-authenticated messages sent to Gmail accounts.
If Gmail automatically sends a significant number of your messages to spam, the rate shown in the dashboard might seem low, because recipients get fewer of your messages in their Inbox.
Feedback Loop dashboard
A feedback loop is a mechanism that lets you know when messages in an email campaign are marked as spam by recipients. To get feedback loop information about your email campaigns, first set up the Feedback Loop for Gmail.
The Feedback Loop dashboard displays the spam rate for messages from a specific email campaign that have a feedback loop ID. The ID identifies the email campaign associated with the message.
- Average FBL spam rate: The average spam rate across all campaigns per day identified by Feedback Loop, over time. To display spam rates for a specific email campaign, click a data point on the graph.
- Identifier volume: The number of unique campaign identifiers per day that were identified by Feedback Loop, over time.
Troubleshoot spam rates
Although we recommend you keep spam rates as low as possible, if your spam rate is extremely low, something might be impacting the accuracy of the data.
To protect the privacy of Gmail users, the dashboard might not include all data on days when outgoing email volume is low. This can impact what you see in the dashboard.
| Issue | Possible causes | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| I have high spam rates for my outgoing messages | Message recipients are reporting your messages as spam, after they’re delivered to the inbox. |
The longer you allow high spam rates, the more likely more of your future messages will be sent to spam. To reduce spam, follow these recommendations: Meet the guidelines and requirements in Email sender guidelines. Avoid sending behaviors that contribute to a low reputation, and wait for the sending domain or IP address to recover from the low reputation. Follow these best practices for sending email:
After taking steps to minimize spam, wait up to 7 days for the spam rate to reach a normal level that's within compliance. |
|
Compared to what I typically see in Postmaster Tools, my spam rate seems extremely low. |
This dashboard shows the user-reported spam rate. Gmail is automatically sending a significant number of your messages to spam. The dashboard rate is low because recipients get fewer of your messages in their Inbox. | |
| A high spam rate suddenly dropped to a rate of 0. | As a result of a historical high spam rate, many messages are automatically being sent to spam, and recipients aren’t reporting any inbox messages as spam. | |
| The spam rate is missing after historically displaying a high spam rate. | As a result of a historical high spam rate, many messages are automatically being sent to spam, and recipients aren’t reporting any inbox messages as spam. | |
| The spam rate is high but the domain or IP reputation is high. | Messages delivered to the inbox are being reported as spam by recipients. IP or domain reputation may be starting to drop | |
| The spam rate is low but the domain or IP reputation is low. |
This dashboard shows the user-reported spam rate. Gmail is automatically sending a significant number of your messages to spam, and few recipients are reporting them as not spam Your sending domain or IP address is recovering from a low reputation and potential spam messages in the inbox aren’t reported as spam by recipients. |
|
| The spam rate doesn’t match third-party sender spam reports. | Third-party senders don’t use the same data as Gmail to determine spam. Gmail also determines spam based on other factors, including active users and suspicious email behaviors. So, third-party sender spam reports will typically differ from the data shown in this dashboard. | Use reports from both Google and third-party senders to help identify and resolve sending issues. |
| The number of Feedback Loop IDs is lower than the number you actually send. |
There are few or no spam reports for a particular Feedback Loop ID. To show in this dashboard, a minimum number of spam reports for the Feedback Loop ID is required. The Feedback Loop ID doesn’t have enough messages to engaged users. |
If you don’t see a specific feedback ID, it’s possible the campaign is sending very little or no spam. However, if you have a high spam rate, consider using fewer unique feedback loop IDs. |
Reputation is a rating of the quality of domains and IP addresses used to send email, and is determined by the sending behavior of a domain or IP address. Internet service and email providers monitor senders’ reputations. Senders should maintain a high reputation to help ensure messages are delivered as expected. Messages from senders with a high reputation are more likely to be delivered to Gmail’s Inbox instead of to Spam.
Postmaster Tools displays the reputation of domains and IP addresses that send DKIM-authenticated messages sent to Gmail accounts. If the sending IP address doesn’t use DKIM, the reputation is displayed for domains and IP addresses that send SPF-authenticated messages to Gmail accounts.
To be reflected in the Domain Reputation dashboard, the exact domain must be used during DKIM and SPF authentication.
Below are the reputation ratings displayed in the IP Reputation and Domain Reputation dashboard. Spam messages include messages automatically flagged as spam by Gmail and messages marked as spam by recipients.
Troubleshoot low reputation ratings
To protect the privacy of Gmail users, the dashboard might not include all data on days when outgoing email volume is low. This can impact what you see in the dashboard.
| Reputation rating | Typical causes | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| Bad | History of sending a high volume of spam regularly. Email from this address is almost always marked as spam or rejected by the receiving server. |
To improve your reputation rating, avoid these email sending behaviors: Sending spam, sending malware, sending from suspicious domains, and sending messages that aren’t authenticated by SPF or DKIM. Follow the recommended actions in the Troubleshoot spam rates section in this article. |
| Low | History of sending a significant volume of spam regularly. Email from this address is likely to be marked as spam. | |
| Medium | History of sending legitimate email, but occasionally sends spam. Most email from this address will have a fair deliverability rate, except with a notable increase in spam levels. | |
| High | History of very low spam rates, and complies with Gmail's sender guidelines. Email from this address is rarely marked as spam by Gmail. |
The Authentication dashboard displays the percent of your email that passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. This dashboard displays data for messages that have your domain in the From: header. Senders typically achieve 95% or higher success rates for DKIM and DMARC when these methods are set up correctly. SPF success rates tend to be lower and are often related to how many messages are sent by third parties.
- DKIM success rate: Percent of messages from the authenticating domain that passed DKIM and are aligned with the From: header.
- SPF success rate: Percent of messages from the authenticating domain that passed SPF and are aligned with the From: header. Doesn’t include spoofed messages.
- DMARC success rate: The percent of messages from the authenticating domain that successfully identified the DMARC policy and either SPF or DKIM passed with alignment. Learn more about DMARC alignment.
Troubleshoot low authentication rates
Keep in mind that you can’t control these behaviors, which impact authentication success:
- How recipients forward your messages
- How mailings lists handle your messages
- What malicious users do with your messages
General best practices to increase authentication success rates are:
- Configure DKIM, SPF, and DMARC.
- Use a reputable and stable DNS provider.
- Verify your DNS records.
- Require that all third-party sending services use DKIM for your domain. Create a unique DKIM key and configuration for each third party service you use to send email.
To protect the privacy of Gmail users, the dashboard might not include all data on days when outgoing email volume is low. This can impact what you see in the dashboard.
| Authentication method | Possible causes of low success rate | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| DKIM | A DNS error occurred when looking up your DKIM configuration. This can be caused by an incorrectly formatted DKIM DNS TXT record, or by a temporary DNS error. |
Check that your DKIM TXT record is formatted correctly and contains the correct DKIM key. Check success rate later to check that DNS errors are resolved. |
| Recipients are auto forwarding your messages. If you’re not getting errors, the forwarding server is likely getting them. | If possible, contact the account service that’s forwarding your messages. | |
| A malicious actor is trying to replay or spoof old messages, and they’re getting the delivery errors. This is called a DKIM replay attack. |
Consider adding an expiration time to your DKIM setup to help reduce the risk of malicious actors. Set up SPF authentication for additional security |
|
| SPF | A DNS error occurred when looking up your SPF configuration. This can be caused by an incorrectly formatted SPF DNS TXT record, or by a temporary DNS error. |
Check that your SPF TXT record is formatted correctly and references all domains and IP addresses that end email for your domain. Check success rate later to check if any DNS errors are resolved. |
|
A third-party sender or forwarder should authenticate SPF with their own information (domain or IP address), not with the original sender's information:
|
If you use a third-party service to send email, verify that they’re using their own domain to send, and that SPF is set up for that domain. | |
| A malicious actor might be attempting to impersonate (spoof) your domain. If they’re sending from domains or IP addresses not in your domain’s SPF record, messages will fail authentication. | Set up DMARC authentication with a policy of quarantine or reject, however this might increase the risk of legitimate messages being quarantined or rejected. | |
| DMARC | A DNS error occurred when looking up your DMARC configuration. This can be caused by an incorrectly formatted DMARC DNS TXT record, or by a temporary DNS error. |
Check that your DMARC TXT record is formatted correctly. Check success rate later to check if any DNS errors are resolved. |
| A malicious actor is trying to replay or spoof old messages. | Set up DMARC authentication with a policy of quarantine or reject, however this might increase the risk of legitimate messages being quarantined or rejected. | |
| If a message fails both SPF and DKIM authentication, it will also fail DMARC authentication. For example, if a third-party sender modifies messages without updating the message From: header, SPF and DKIM both fail, and so DMARC fails. |
Make sure messages pass SPF and DKIM authentication. If you’re in the process of turning on DKIM for your domain, we recommend using a DMARC policy with pct=0 and reviewing your daily DMARC reports to help identify the source of unauthenticated messages. |
|
| Emails with some authentication but that without From: header alignment are being sent to spam. If email volumes are high, your email might be rate limited. DMARC passes or fails a message based on how closely the message From: header matches the sending domain specified by either SPF or DKIM. This is called alignment. |
If your DMARC record is set up for strict alignment, consider changing to relaxed alignment, which typically provides sufficient spoofing protection. Strict alignment might result in messages from associated subdomains or other legitimate messages to be rejected or sent to spam. Learn more about alignment |
The Encryption dashboard displays the percent of your authenticated messages that are encrypted.
TLS inbound: Percent of incoming messages to Gmail that were sent over a secure TLS connection, compared with total number of messages received from the domain.
TLS outbound: Percent of outgoing messages to Gmail that were sent over a secure TLS connection, compared with the total number of messages sent from the domain.
Troubleshoot Encryption issues
To protect the privacy of Gmail users, the dashboard might not include all data on days when outgoing email volume is low. This can impact what you see in the dashboard.
| Issue | Possible causes | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| I’m using TLS to send all my email but the dashboard shows a percent lower than 100. |
Recipients are auto forwarding your messages and the forwarding server doesn’t use TLS. A malicious actor is trying to replay or spoof old messages, and they’re getting the delivery errors. This is called a DKIM replay attack. |
Check your TLS logs to identify the source of the failures. Use DKIM authentication to increase deliverability chances. |
| I’m using TLS to send all my email but the dashboard shows 0 percent. |
You might have a TLS configuration that’s using invalid, expired, or revoked certificates. You might be using an older version of TLS that isn’t as secure as later versions. |
Make your email system supports the latest TLS versions for outgoing messages. To learn more, visit Send email over a secure TLS connection. |
The Delivery Errors dashboard displays the percent of all authenticated messages (SPF or DKIM) that were rejected or that temporarily failed, compared to all authenticated messages. This dashboard also displays:
- Message rejection and temporary failure volumes
- Reason for message rejection or temporary failure
To protect the privacy of Gmail users, the dashboard might not include all data on days when outgoing email volume is low.
If failure rates are higher than what your sending logs show, some reasons might be:
- Recipients are auto forwarding your messages and the forwarding server is getting the delivery errors.
- A malicious actor is trying to replay or spoof old messages, and they’re getting the delivery errors. This is called a DKIM replay attack.
Postmaster Tools delivery errors
| Error message | Description | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| Rate limit exceeded | The domain or IP address is sending traffic at a suspiciously high rate, so Gmail temporarily limited the sending rate. |
Stop sending email immediately when you see this error, then resume sending in a few minutes. This is referred to as warming up the sending domain or IP address. We recommend sending email at a constant rate, which is less likely to cause this error than sending email at a varying rate. |
| Suspected spam | Gmail determined the message might be spam. | Typically, this error is the result of a low domain or IP address reputation. If problems persist, contact us through the bulk sender escalation form. |
| Email content is possibly spammy | Due to the message content, Gmail determined the message might be spam. | Some types of message content, such as Internet links, increase the possibility of messages being treated as spam. If the problem persists, contact us through the bulk sender escalation form. |
| Bad or unsupported attachment | The message has unsupported attachments. To learn about supported attachments in Gmail, visit File types blocked in Gmail. | Send attachments that are explicitly supported by Gmail. |
| DMARC policy of the sender domain | The sending domain has a DMARC policy of reject. Messages that don’t pass DMARC are rejected based on this policy. You can use a DMARC policy of none to meet our sender guideline requirements and still deliver messages that don’t pass DMARC. | Check your daily DMARC reports to help identify if the message is legitimate, or a spoofing or phishing attempt. |
|
Sending IP has a low reputation |
The reputation of the sending IP address is very low. Learn how to improve your IP reputation. | Use other IP addresses to send email. If the problem persists and you’re following the recommendations and requirements in Email sender guidelines, contact us through the bulk sender escalation form. |
| Sending domain has a low reputation | The reputation of the sending domain is very low. Learn how to improve your domain reputation | If the problem persists and you’re following the recommendations and requirements in Email sender guidelines, contact us through the bulk sender escalation form. |
| IP is in one or more public RBLs | The sending IP address is listed in one or more public internet blocklists. To be removed from a blocklist, contact the organizations that blocklisted the sending IP address. | Contact the blocklist owner and ask to be removed. |
| Domain is in one or more public RBLs | The sending domain is listed in one or more public internet blocklists. To be removed from a blocklist, contact the organization that blocklisted the domain. | Contact the blocklist owner and ask to be removed. |
| Bad or missing PTR record | The IP address that sent the message doesn’t have a PTR record. |
If the PTR record is missing, add one. You can use the Google Admin Toolbox Dig tool to check for a PTR record. |
Troubleshoot delivery errors
Too many failures reduces the limits for your sending domains and IP addresses, and large volumes of email will take longer to be delivered. The most effective way to increase your quota is to send email with as few failures as possible.
Some general recommendations for troubleshooting delivery errors are:
- Review error messages you’re getting to identify ways to reduce delivery errors.
- To get more information, check your own sending server logs.
If the error message doesn’t include a resolution or recommended action, it typically falls into one of these categories:
| Error type | Description | Recommended actions |
|---|---|---|
| Temporary failures | Also called temp fails. Temp fails are a throttling tool intended to slow down sending rates. If you don’t slow your sending rate after temp fails, it’s likely your email will have some period of permanent failures. We recommend an exponential backoff: Periodically retry a failed request, increasing the delays between each request. Learn more about exponential backoff. |
Best practice: completely stop sending for a short period of time, then resume sending at a slower rate. Slow your sending rate. |
| Abuse-related permanent failures | There can be several causes for these errors, including message content, the sending IP address reputation, issues with your domain, or failing to slow your sending rate after getting temp fails. |
Follow the message formatting recommendations in Email sender guidelines. Best practice: completely stop sending for a short period of time, then resume sending at a slower rate. Slow your sending rate. |
| Generic permanent failures | These are typically an indication of something wrong with Google email servers. |
Best practice: completely stop sending for a short period of time, then resume sending at a slower rate. Slow your sending rate. |
