Setting up Google Postmaster Tools (GPT)

Google Postmaster Tools are a free dashboard provided by Google that will tell you exactly what Gmail thinks of your domain reputation. You do not need to set up Google Postmaster Tools - their use is always optional, and only useful if you send enough email volume to Google-hosted email addresses.

Although it is only designed to answer the question, "Do my email messages have a good domain reputation at Gmail?" it can act as a very good proxy for your sending domain reputation overall. Google are state of the art when it comes to tracking the engagement their Gmail customers have with the email they see, and since Google is motivated to have happy users of their Gmail email service, they monitor and analyze a myriad of data points on that inbound email, and show some of them in Google Postmaster Tools.

There are two main steps to the process of setting up Google Postmaster Tools so that you can view it, and optionally then share the data with the Click Deliverability team.

Gathering pre-requisites

• You must be sending on average a minimum 100 email messages per day to Gmail gmail.com (or Google Workspace hosted mailboxes) for each of your domains.
  
  
• You’ll need a Google account to sign into Google Postmaster Tools with. This can just be your own personal Gmail account, but you’ll probably want to check with colleagues, your IT team, and your Change Management committee (if you have one).
  
  
• You will need to create at least one DNS TXT record, so you’ll need access to your DNS Service. This may be via a web portal they provide, or through your own IT resources. When in doubt, check with the particular company you're using for additional help or instructions. Keep in mind that changes to DNS records may take up to 48 hours to take effect.

Set up in Google

When you are ready to set up you’ll want to first read through Google’s own documentation here: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/9981691

Then navigate to https://www.gmail.com/postmaster/ and:

1. Sign in with your Google account
2. In the bottom right, click the round “+” button
3. Enter your sending domain
4. Click Next, and follow Google’s instructions in the next modal.
5. You will be taking the TXT record value that they give you, which will look something similar to:

   google-site-verification=xC3kz9b1raWJST9VAggCsXCFr0h0uq1pJtvannkghzj

   and creating the TXT DNS record mentioned in the section on Pre-requisites. You will possibly need the assistance of your DNS IT team, or DNS Service Provider to complete this step. If you have created, or updated your domain’s SPF record before, this is a similar process.

6. Verify your domain (Google have specific instructions here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/183895)
7. To prove that you own this domain, click Verify
8. Remember after verification, it may take some time before your domain’s verification status updates to “Verified.”

As a domain owner, you can add or remove anyone who isn’t also an owner from your domain. If you want to remove someone from your domain who is an owner, however, you’ll need to remove their domain verification record in the DNS.

Check your own email sending data

Google can sometimes take up to 48 hours (rarely longer) to start showing data on the Google Postmaster Tools dashboard. Once you start to see data you can check the user-reported spam rate, IP address reputation, Domain reputation, email authentication (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), and other data points.

Important Note: Remember that this will be Google’s view of all the email that you send to Gmail gmail.com addresses and Google Workspace hosted mailboxes, and so will include any other ESPs that you use for other mailstreams.