Reputation monitoring sites

There are a number of sites online that provide public information about reputation of an IP address or domain name.

  1. Sender Score – http://senderscore.org/. Provided by Return Path. They collect data from some ISPs and blocklists. Using a proprietary formula, they calculate a sender score running from 1 – 100 for each IP address sending mail to their network. Higher scores means a better reputation. Can be inaccurate for IPs sending very low volumes of email. Some ISPs use Sender Score to feed into their delivery decision engines.
  2. Sender Base – http://senderbase.org/. Provided by Ironport / Cisco. They collect publicly available data as well as data from their userbase. Reputation is reported as “good” “poor” or “neutral.” Senderbase scores feed into some ISP delivery decision engines.
  3. AOL reputation – http://postmaster.aol.com/cgi-bin/plugh/check_ip.pl. Reports the reputation of IPs as determined by AOL. Uses a scale of “good” “poor” or “neutral”.
  4. RoadRunner blocks – http://security.rr.com/amIBlockedByRR. Reports if a particular IP address is currently being blocked from sending mail to Road Runner.
  5. Spamhaus blocks – http://www.spamhaus.org/. Reports if an IP is currently listed on any of the Spamhaus lists.
  6. Sendmail Reputation – http://sendmail.com/sm/resources/tools/ip_reputation/. Reports reputation of an IP address as measured by Sendmail.
  7. Trusted Source – http://www.trustedsource.org/. Provided by McAfee.
  8. Commtouch – http://www.commtouch.com/check-ip-reputation/. Provided by Commtouch.
  9. Barracuda Central – http://www.barracudacentral.org/lookups/. Provided by Barracuda, shows what IP addresses or domain names are currently blocked.
  10. SNDS – http://postmaster.live.com/snds/. Provided by Microsoft / Hotmail / Live.com. Will show IP addresses that are currently blocked by Microsoft.

Related Posts

Reputation: part 2

Yesterday, I posted about reputation as a combination of measurable statistics, like bounce rates and complaint rates and spamtrap hits. But some mailers who meet those reputation numbers are still seeing some delivery problems. When they ask places, like AOL, why their mail is being put into the bulk folder or blocked they are told that the issue is their reputation. This leads to confusion on the part of those senders because, to them, their reputation is fine. Their numbers are exactly where they were a few weeks ago when their delivery was fine.
What appears to have changed is how reputation is being calculated. AOL has actually been hinting for a while that they are looking at reputation, and even published a best practices document back in April. Based on what people are saying some of that change has started to become sender visible.
We know that AOL and other ISPs look at engagement, and that they can actually measure engagement a lot more accurately than sender can. Senders rely on clicks and image loading to determine if a user opened an email. ISPs, particularly those who manage the email interface, can measure the user actively opening the email.
We also know that ISPs measure clicks. Not just “this is spam” or “this is not spam” clicks in the interface, but they know when a link in an email has been clicked as well.
I expect that both these measures are now a more formal and important part of the AOL reputation magic.
In addition to the clicks, I would speculate that AOL is now also looking at the number of dead addresses on a list. It is even possible they are doing something tricky like looking at the number of people who have a particular from address in their address book.
All ISPs know what percentage of a list is delivered to inactive accounts. After a long enough period of time of inactivity, mail to those accounts will be rejected. However for some period of time the accounts will be accepting mail. Sending a lot of mail to a lot of dead accounts is a sign of a mailer who is not paying attention to recipient engagement.
All ISPs with bulk folders have to know how many people have the from address in their address book. Otherwise, the mail would get delivered incorrectly. In this way, ISPs can monitor the “generic” recipient’s view of the email. Think of it as a similar to hitting the “this is not spam” button preemptively.
This change in reputation at the ISPs is going to force senders to change how they think of reputation, too. No longer is reputation all about complaints, it is about sending engaging and relevant email. The ISPs are now measuring engagement. They are measuring relevancy. They are measuring better than many senders are.
Senders cannot continue to accrete addresses on lists and continue sending email into the empty hole of an abandoned account while not taking a hit on their reputation. That empty hole is starting to hurt reputation much more than it helps reputation.

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Delivery Monitor Closing Down

Delivery Monitor by Aweber is one of the inbox monitoring services available for senders. Aweber has been in the process of winding down Delivery Monitor for the last few months and they will be turning the service off completely tomorrow.
A lot of folks have asked me about replacements for Delivery Monitor. There are, of course, Return Path and Pivotal Veracity, but many of the smaller mailers I talk to can’t justify the expenditure for either service.
Enter Green Arrow Monitor, a service provided by Green Arrow. This is a new seed list service aimed at marketers that need some delivery monitoring at commercial US ISPs. They’re reaching for the middle of the market. As a bonus, they’re offering special pricing for former Delivery Monitor customers.
While they don’t offer all the bells and whistles of other seedbox services, for the small to mid-size company that wants to know what their delivery is like at the major commercial ISPs this is a worthwhile service to investigate.
Full disclosure – I worked with GreenArrow to look at what parts of the market were being missed by other monitoring services and provide delivery consulting for some of their customers.

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Link roundup June 18, 2010

Hotmail has released a new version of their software with some changes. Return Path discusses the changes in depth, but there are a couple that senders may find helpful.

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