Set up Google Postmaster Tools step by step

What it means

Google Postmaster Tools is a free website from Google that shows how Gmail sees the emails sent from your domain. It is the only official place to see your spam complaint rate at Gmail, along with authentication results, encryption and delivery errors. It also shows whether you meet Gmail's bulk sender requirements.

Why it matters

• Gmail asks bulk senders to keep their spam rate under 0.1% and never reach 0.3%. Postmaster Tools is where you see that number.
• It warns you early, before your emails start going to spam for everyone.
• It costs nothing and takes ten minutes to set up.

How to check

Before you start, make sure your basics are in place, because Postmaster Tools only shows data for authenticated email:

• Send a test email: on the home page (/), send an email to your Delivmail test address and check that SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass for your domain.
• Use the Domain scanner: at /domain-scanner, check that your DNS records are valid.

How to fix it

1. Sign in

Go to postmaster.google.com and sign in with any Google account. It does not need to be a Google Workspace account.

2. Add your domain

Add the domain used in your From address, for example yourdomain.com. If you send newsletters from a subdomain like news.yourdomain.com, you can add it too.

3. Verify that you own it

Google shows a TXT record that starts with google-site-verification=. In your DNS provider:

1. Add a TXT record on the domain itself (name @ or empty).
2. Paste the value exactly. It does not replace your SPF record: a domain can have several TXT records, only one of them being SPF.
3. Go back to Postmaster Tools and click "Verify". If it fails, wait an hour and try again.

4. Wait for data

Data appears only when you send enough email to Gmail users, roughly a few hundred messages per day or more. Small senders often see empty charts: this is normal and not an error. Data is shown with a delay of about a day.

5. Read the main dashboards

• Spam rate: the share of your emails that Gmail users reported as spam. Keep it well under 0.1%.
• Compliance status: whether you meet Gmail's sender requirements (authentication, one-click unsubscribe, spam rate).
• Authentication: the share of traffic passing SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
• Delivery errors: rejected or delayed messages.

Google changes the dashboards from time to time, so names may differ slightly.

6. Share access

You can give access to a colleague or agency from the domain settings, without sharing your password.

Check that it is fixed

Your domain shows as verified in the list. After a few days of normal sending, charts should appear. If the spam rate rises, check your list quality and unsubscribe link, and send a new test to Delivmail to rule out technical problems.