TL;DR: As of September 30, it will no longer be possible to access version 1 of Google Postmaster Tools. Only version 2 will remain available, but reputation data (IP and domain) will not be migrated to it.
The story was beautiful: in 2015, Google released a novel tool with its Google Postmaster Tools. The idea was to provide Gmail reputation data (among other things) to email senders, so that they could track the evolution of their deliverability. At the time, and still today, it was a unique, user-friendly tool. Its only equivalent was Microsoft's SNDS interface.
This v1 of Google Postmaster Tools included information on spam complaint rates, IP address reputation, domain reputation, feedback loops, authentication, message encryption and delivery errors.
About two years ago, Google launched a v2 version whose main advances included a compliance table, more detailed information on the percentage of Gmail spam complaints, and above all better visibility of the feedback loop.
As of September 30, v1 will disappear, making way for version 2 data only. Google has nevertheless announced that new dashboards will appear in the future, without specifying which ones for the moment.
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Why has Gmail's reputation data disappeared?
It's a huge question, and one that's going to be hard to cover in just two paragraphs. However, I see two main aspects:
- The difficult balance between supporting "legitimate" senders and helping "spammers" too much: giving out reputation information helps senders who are trying to do their job properly (i.e. send emails to people who have given their consent), but it also gives valuable information to spammers (who don't respect the rules and are constantly trying to find loopholes in anti-spam filters). If Gmail decides to stop making this information available, it's highly likely that this second category has taken up too much space in the use of this data.
- Giving an IP score and a domain score is reductive: reputation is an extremely complex piece of information. It involves dozens and sometimes hundreds of indicators that interact with each other. As we've seen in the past, the reputation indicators in Google Postmaster Tools don't always accurately represent the performance of campaigns sent to Gmail. So Google has made life easier for itself, forcing emailers to focus on other, more essential data.
Still, as a deliverability consultant, it was handy to be able to say to a customer: "Look, we've gone from poor to high in 2 months, you've seen what a good job I'm doing 😀 ".
What can I do without Gmail's reputation data?
Gmail's IP reputation and domain data have never really been the most relevant indicators of deliverability tracking (even if they were "simple" to explain).
The 3 (two in fact) main indicators to keep an eye on are :
- Monitoring bounce rates by destination => which will indicate if there is a blockage when they rise sharply.
- Tracking click-through rates (and open rates) by destination => which will indicate spamming if they drop sharply
I would also add two other indicators that show how irritated recipients are with your emails:
- Track the dissatisfaction rates of your campaigns => the ratio between the number of unsubscribers and clickers on your campaigns
- Gmail complaint rate tracking => this information is still available in Google Postmaster Tools
As far as complaint rates are concerned, I invite you to use the Feedback Loops information available in Google Postmaster Tools v2. This extremely valuable tool, when properly configured, allows you to track Gmail complaint rates by campaign or by campaign typology. And if the feedback loops data are not consistent in your GPTs, don't hesitate to lobby your ESP.
About the Google Postmaster Tools API
A version 2 of the Google Postmaster Tools API will be launched by the end of 2025. In the meantime, the v1 API will continue to operate, but only with the data available in the v2 interface, without the reputation data on IPs and domains.
Version 2 of the API, even without reputation data, will still see new functionalities compared to API v1, such as domain management (add and delete), compliance status and an API Batch. Platforms that have integrated API v1 will have to rewrite the whole thing, as API v2 will obviously be technically very different.
Source: https://support.google.com/a/answer/16594218 and Slack #emailgeeks Read Badsender's full article on Google Postmaster Tools (which you'll need to update): https://www.badsender.com/2018/12/18/postmaster-gmail-monitoring-delivrabilite/
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