Google Postmaster Tools

Gmail is usually the largest single slice of a political email list, and it is the only mailbox provider that will tell you what it thinks of your mail. Google Postmaster Tools is that channel. The platform connects your domain to it for you and shows the numbers next to everything else about the domain, so you do not have to run a separate Google account or remember to go look.

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What you have to do

One thing: publish a TXT record. It appears in your record set on Admin > Domains alongside the DKIM and MAIL FROM records, as a google-site-verification= value on your root domain (not the sending subdomain, because Postmaster works at the organizational domain level). Everything else is automatic: You never need a Google account, and you never give us access to one.

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Where the numbers show up

The Postmaster panel appears in two places: on the sender identity page for the identity’s domain, and on Admin > Domains for the domain itself. It shows: Two things it deliberately does not show:

• Domain and IP reputation are not displayed. Google’s older Postmaster API reported a reputation grade; the current version does not expose one at all. Rather than print a fabricated or stale grade, the panel leaves it out. Spam rate and the compliance table are the live signals.
• A missing number reads “No data yet”, never 0%. A spam rate of zero and a spam rate Google has not reported are very different results, and showing the second as the first would be the most flattering possible lie.

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Why a new sender sees nothing

Google only publishes figures for a domain sending meaningful daily volume to Gmail. Below that floor it returns no rows at all, so a new domain, a small list, or a domain that has only sent tests will show “No data yet” for a while. There is also a built-in lag. Gmail aggregates a day’s traffic well after that day ends, so the platform reads a window ending about two days back. Sending today and checking tonight will show you nothing new; that is the reporting window, not a problem with your domain.

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Spam rate alerts

Google’s published bulk-sender threshold is to keep reported spam below 0.3% and never reach it. The platform alerts your organization when your peak reported spam rate reaches 0.2%, so there is room to act before Gmail does. The alert fires at most once a week per organization, because the condition takes days to move and a daily repeat of the same bad news is not useful. If it fires, the cause is nearly always list quality rather than content: an acquired list that was not validated, a segment that has not been mailed in a year, or a cadence that got too aggressive. See Bounces, complaints, and suppressions and the sunset policy.

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When the domain is already claimed

Postmaster lets exactly one Google account own a domain. If someone at your organization, or a former vendor, already registered it, the panel says Claimed by another account and gives you the two ways forward:

1. Ask the current owner to add our platform account as an owner of the domain in their Postmaster Tools, or
2. Ask them to delete the domain from their Postmaster Tools so we can register it.

Either one unblocks it. In the meantime the domain keeps sending normally; you are only missing the reporting.

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Statuses

This is also where a verified Gmail Verified Sender Program status is confirmed: Google exposes no program field over its API, so staff read it from this same Postmaster compliance view for the domain.