When you see a blue checkmark next to emails in Gmail, it means that the sender has verified that they own the email address and brand logo.
To determine that an email is verified, Gmail uses the following:
- BIMI (Brand Indicators for Message Identification): An open standard that allows email senders to use their brand logo in emails. BIMI helps give email recipients and email security systems increased confidence in the source of emails.
- VMC (Verified Mark Certificate): A digital certificate issued by a certificate authority that verifies logo ownership.
- DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance): A standard that helps email security systems filter and separate real messages from potentially spoofed ones.
Verified emails go through Gmail's normal anti-abuse checks. If the emails pass, the sender's verified brand logo is shown. To see which messages are validated through BIMI, DMARC, and VMC, look for the blue checkmark next to the sender's name. The checkmark lets you know that the message is authenticated and authorized to show that logo.
To find information about the sender's domain, point to the checkmark.