Reading Gmail Postmaster Tools

Updated Mar 22, 2026 · 5 min read

Connecting Postmaster Tools, what each metric means, when to act.

On this page · 3

Adding your domain
What the dashboards mean
The 24-hour lag

Postmaster Tools is the only direct deliverability signal Gmail exposes. If you are sending more than a few hundred Gmail-bound emails per day, you should be checking it.

Adding your domain

Go to postmaster.google.com, click Get Started, add your domain. Gmail asks you to publish a verification TXT record at the apex. Copy the value, then in Inboxlee → Domains → your-domain → Verifications, paste the value. Inboxlee publishes the record. Within a few minutes, Postmaster Tools confirms.

What the dashboards mean

Domain reputation - High / Medium / Low / Bad. High and Medium are normal. Low means filtering is more aggressive. Bad means most of your mail is going to spam.

IP reputation - less actionable for shared SaaS senders since the IP is shared.

Spam rate - user-reported complaint rate. Above 0.3% is the action threshold.

Authentication - SPF, DKIM, DMARC pass rates. Should be near 100%.

Encryption - TLS pass rate. Should be near 100% on modern Workspace senders.

The 24-hour lag

Postmaster Tools updates once per day with roughly a 24-hour lag. If you launched a campaign this morning, you will see the impact tomorrow afternoon. Do not panic-pause based on hour-by-hour speculation. Wait for the chart.

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