Postmaster Tools dashboards let you view various data about outgoing email you send to personal Gmail accounts, including data about spam rate, reputation, message authentication, and delivery errors. This information helps you meet the sender requirements described in our Email sender guidelines.
All your domains are listed on the Postmaster Tools home page, along with the date each domain was added, and each domain’s verification status. For details about verification status, click the tool tip in the Status column. From the home page, you can access dashboards with data about outgoing email from each domain.
To set up Postmaster Tools for the first time, visit Monitor outgoing email with Postmaster Tools.
Dashboard data
About the data in Postmaster Tools dashboards:
- Postmaster Tools attempts to exclude all forwarded messages from dashboard data, however it’s possible that some dashboards include data from forwarded messages.
- Dashboard data isn’t real-time data. When you make changes to your outgoing email, the changes aren’t immediately reflected in dashboard data. Typically, the data is updated within 24 hours but can take longer.
- Some dashboards show data only for messages authenticated with DKIM.
- To protect the privacy of Gmail users, dashboards might not include all data on days when your outgoing email volume is low. This can impact what you see in the dashboards.
- Postmaster Tools uses Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Open dashboards
To open a specific dashboard, use the menus at the top of the Postmaster Tools window:
- 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.
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 email campaign messages that recipients have marked as spam. |
| 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 changes 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 email.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 only for bulk senders
- 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 tooltip next to the requirement.
- 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 up to 7 days for changes to be reflected in the dashboard.
Troubleshoot compliance status issues
This section describes common problems with compliance status and recommended steps to help resolve them. In this section:
Dashboard doesn't update after I made changes to be compliant
Compliance status dashboard data conflicts with other dashboards data
Promotion messages have 1-click unsubscribe but the dashboard shows "Needs work"
Dashboard doesn't update after I made changes to be compliant
Possible cause:
The Compliance status dashboard uses a rolling data average that’s gathered over multiple days, and so your domain status might not update immediately.
Recommended action:
Check the Compliance status dashboard after 7 days to see updated information.
Compliance dashboard data conflicts with other dashboards data
Possible causes:
- 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 email.solarmora.com to Postmaster Tools, the Compliance status dashboard shows data for the entire solarmora.com primary domain.
Recommended actions:
- Wait 7 days, then check the Compliance status dashboard again to see updated information.
- For data about subdomains, use Postmaster Tools dashboards other than the Compliance Status dashboard.
Promotion messages have 1-click unsubscribe but dashboard shows "Needs work"
Possible cause:
If recipients mark many of your messages without one-click unsubscribe as spam, the One-click unsubscribe entry in the dashboard might show Needs work.
Recommended action:
Use the Feedback Loop dashboard to identify which messages without one-click unsubscribe are being marked as spam by recipients. To see this data in the Feedback Loop dashboard, set up Feedback Loop.
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.
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 get spam rate information for email campaigns, go to the Feedback Loop dashboard.
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.
Troubleshoot spam rates
This section describes common problems and solutions for spam rates issues. The longer you allow high spam rates, the more likely more of your future messages will be sent to spam.
After taking the recommended actions in this section to reduce spam, wait up to 7 days for the spam rate to reach a level that falls within compliance.
In this section:
My outgoing messages have high spam rates
Spam rate seems very low compared to the typical rate
A high spam rate suddenly changed to a rate of 0
Spam rate is missing after historically displaying a high spam rate
Spam rate is high but my reputation is good
Spam rate is low but reputation is poor
Spam rate doesn't match third-party spam reports
Number of Feedback Loops IDs seems low
My outgoing messages have high spam rates
Possible cause:
Message recipients are reporting your messages as spam, after they’re delivered to the inbox.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate seems very low compared to the typical rate
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
A high spam rate suddenly changed to a rate of 0
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate is missing after historically displaying a high spam rate
Possible cause:
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. This dashboard reflects user-reported spam, not messages automatically marked as spam by Gmail.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate is high but my reputation is good
Possible cause:
Messages delivered to the inbox are being reported as spam by recipients. IP or domain reputation may be starting to drop.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate is low but reputation is poor
Possible causes:
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.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate doesn't match third-party spam reports
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended action:
Use reports from both Google and third-party senders to help identify and resolve sending issues.
Number of Feedback Loops IDs seems low
Possible causes:
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.
Recommended action:
If you don’t see a specific feedback loop 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.
Note: The Domain Reputation dashboard only displays messages sent from the exact domain used for DKIM and SPF authentication.
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 for domains and IP addresses that send DKIM-authenticated messages to Gmail accounts. If the senders don't use DKIM, reputation is displayed for domains and IP addresses that send SPF-authenticated messages to Gmail accounts.
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 ratings
Bad: History of sending a high volume of spam regularly. Email from this domain or address is almost always marked as spam or rejected by the receiving server.
Low: History of sending a significant volume of spam regularly. Email from this domain or address is likely to be marked as spam.
Medium: History of sending legitimate email, but occasionally sends spam. Most email from this domain or address has a fair deliverability rate, except when there's a notable increase in spam.
High: History of very low spam rates, and complies with Gmail's sender guidelines. Email from this domain or address is rarely marked as spam by Gmail.
Improve reputation ratings
Recommended actions to improve reputation ratings:
- Avoid these email behaviors: Sending spam, sending malware, sending from suspicious domains, and sending unauthenticated messages. Spam messages include messages automatically flagged as spam by Gmail and messages marked as spam by recipients.
- Reduce your spam rate.
The Feedback Loop dashboard displays the spam rate for email campaign messages that have a feedback loop ID. A feedback loop is a mechanism that lets you know when messages in an email campaign are marked as spam by recipients. The feedback loop ID identifies the email campaign associated with a message.
To get feedback loop information about your email campaigns, first set up the Feedback Loop for Gmail.
This dashboard displays:
- 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. 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.
- Identifier volume: The number of unique campaign identifiers per day identified by Feedback Loop, over time.
To learn more about spam rates, visit the Spam rate dashboard.
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.
Troubleshoot feedback loop spam rates
This section describes common problems and solutions for spam rates issues. The longer you allow high spam rates, the more likely more of your future messages will be sent to spam.
After taking the recommended actions in this section to reduce spam, wait up to 7 days for the spam rate to reach a level that falls within compliance.
In this section:
My outgoing messages have high spam rates
Spam rate seems very low compared to the typical rate
A high spam rate suddenly changed to a rate of 0
Spam rate is missing after historically displaying a high spam rate
Spam rate is high but my reputation is good
Spam rate is low but reputation is poor
Spam rate doesn't match third-party spam reports
Number of Feedback Loops IDs seems low
My outgoing messages have high spam rates
Possible cause:
Message recipients are reporting your messages as spam, after they’re delivered to the inbox.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate seems very low compared to the typical rate
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
A high spam rate suddenly changed to a rate of 0
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate is missing after historically displaying a high spam rate
Possible cause:
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. This dashboard reflects user-reported spam, not messages automatically marked as spam by Gmail.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate is high but my reputation is good
Possible cause:
Messages delivered to the inbox are being reported as spam by recipients. IP or domain reputation may be starting to drop.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate is low but reputation is poor
Possible causes:
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.
Recommended actions:
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:
- Send email only to recipients who want to get messages from you.
- Make sure recipients opt in to get messages from you.
- Confirm each recipient's email address before subscribing them.
- Periodically send messages to confirm that recipients want to stay subscribed.
- Consider unsubscribing recipients who don’t open or read your messages.
- Make it easy to unsubscribe.
- Use the feedback ID to identify the types of message that are most often marked as spam by recipients.
Spam rate doesn't match third-party spam reports
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended action:
Use reports from both Google and third-party senders to help identify and resolve sending issues.
Number of Feedback Loops IDs seems low
Possible causes:
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.
Recommended action:
If you don’t see a specific feedback loop 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.
The Authentication dashboard displays the percent of your email that passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. This dashboard displays data for messages that have your sending 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.
This dashboard displays:
- 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.
Keep in mind that you can’t control these behaviors, which can 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.
Troubleshoot authentication rates
This section describes common problems and recommended actions for low authentication rates:
Low DKIM authentication rate
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
- 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.
Possible cause:
Recipients are auto forwarding your messages. If you’re not getting errors, the forwarding server is likely getting them.
Recommended action:
- Contact the account service that’s forwarding your messages.
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
- Consider adding an expiration time to your DKIM setup to help reduce the risk of malicious actors.
- Set up SPF authentication for additional security.
Low SPF authentication rate
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
- 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.
Possible cause:
A third-party sender or forwarder isn't authenticating SPF with their own information (domain or IP address), and is authenticating with the original sender's information. Messages signed with DKIM and forwarded without changes (for example, by mailing lists or auto forwarding) are often authenticated by SPF for the forwarding domain, and might not align with the From: header. Messages sent by a third-party sender should be SPF authenticated by the third party sender. If not, messages might fail SPF alignment checks.
Recommended action:
- 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.
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended action:
- Set up DMARC authentication with a policy of quarantine or reject, however this might increase the risk of legitimate messages being quarantined or rejected.
Low DMARC authentication rate
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
- Check that your DMARC TXT record is formatted correctly.
- Check success rate later to check if any DNS errors are resolved.
Possible cause:
A malicious actor is trying to replay or spoof old messages.
Recommended action:
- Set up DMARC authentication with a policy of quarantine or reject, however this might increase the risk of legitimate messages being quarantined or rejected.
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended actions:
-
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.
Possible cause:
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.
Recommended action:
- 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.
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.
Troubleshoot encryption issues
This section describes encryption issues and recommended actions to help resolve them. In this section:
All email is sent with TLS but the dashboard shows a percent lower than 100
I’m using TLS to send all my email but the dashboard shows 0 percent
All email is sent with TLS but the dashboard shows a percent lower than 100
Possible causes:
- 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.
Recommended actions:
- 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
Possible causes:
- Your TLS configuration is using invalid, expired, or revoked certificates.
- You're using a version of TLS that isn’t as secure as the latest versions.
Recommended actions:
- Make sure your email system supports the latest TLS versions for outgoing messages.
- Learn more about Sending 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
If failure rates in the dashboard 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.
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.
On this page:
Delivery error descriptions and recommended actions
Troubleshoot delivery errors by type
Delivery errors and recommended actions
This section describes delivery errors and recommended actions to help resolve them. In this section:
Email content is possibly spammy
DMARC policy of the sender domain
Sending IP has a low reputation
Sending domain has a low reputation
Domain is in one or more public RBLs
IP is in one or more public RBLs
Rate limit exceeded
The domain or IP address is sending traffic at a suspiciously high rate, so Gmail temporarily limited the sending rate.
Recommended actions:
-
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.
-
Send email at a constant rate. This is less likely to cause this error than sending email at a varying rate.
Suspected spam
Gmail determined the message might be spam.
Recommended action:
- 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.
Recommended action:
- 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.
Recommended action:
- 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.
Recommended action:
- 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.
Recommended actions:
- Learn how to improve your 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.
Recommended actions:
- 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.
Domain is in one or more public RBLs
The sending domain is listed in one or more public internet blocklists.
Recommended action:
- Contact the organizations that blocklisted the sending domain and ask that it be removed.
IP is in one or more public RBLs
The sending IP address is listed in one or more public internet blocklists.
Recommended action:
- Contact the organizations that blocklisted the sending IP address and ask that it be removed.
Bad or missing PTR record
The IP address that sent the message doesn’t have a PTR record.
Recommended action:
- Use the Google Admin Toolbox Dig tool to check for a PTR record.
- If the PTR record is missing, add one.
Troubleshoot delivery errors by type
If the error message doesn’t include a resolution or recommended action, it typically falls into one of these categories. This section provides recommended actions for these error types:
Temporary failures (temp fails)
Abuse-related permanent failures
Temporary failures (temp fails)
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.
Recommended actions:
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Best practice: completely stop sending for a short period of time, then resume sending at a slower rate.
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Slow your sending rate.
- Learn more about exponential backoff.
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.
Recommended actions:
- 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.
Recommended actions:
- Best practice: completely stop sending for a short period of time, then resume sending at a slower rate.
- Slow your sending rate.
