How long does it take to change reputation at Gmail?

Today I was chatting with a potential client who is in the middle of a frustrating warmup at Gmail. They’re doing absolutely the right things, it’s just taking longer than anyone wants. That’s kinda how it is with Gmail, while their algorithm can adapt quickly to changes. Sometimes, like when you’re warming up or trying to change a bad reputation, it can take 3 – 4 weeks to see any direct progress.This is a screenshot of IP reputation on Google Postmaster Tools. The sender made some significant changes in mail sending on some of their IP addresses starting in mid to late December. You can see, that the tools noticed and the reputation of those IPs bad to good fairly rapidly. It took a few more weeks of consistent sending for those two IPs to switch to yellow. And it took around another month for the reputation to flip to high.
Because this company is doing all the right things, and they’re seeing (as they describe it) some small amounts of improvement, I told them to give it another couple weeks. If they weren’t happy with their progress I could help them. But, frankly, until we can tell if this is something other than a normal warmup there isn’t much else to do.
When I got off the phone I felt very much like a doctor telling a patient to take two aspirin and call me in the morning. But, honestly, sometimes that is the right answer. Give it time.

Spam isn't going away
AOL Postmaster page changes

Related Posts

Warmup advice for Gmail

Getting to the Gmail inbox in concept is simple: send mail people want to receive. For a well established mail program with warm IPs and domains, getting to the inbox in practice is simple. Gmail uses recipient interaction with email to determine if an email is wanted or not. These interactions are easy when mail is delivered to the inbox, even if the user has tabs enabled.
When mail is in the bulk folder, even if it’s wanted, users are less likely to interact with the mail. Senders trying to change their reputation to get back to the inbox face an uphill battle. This doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get out of the bulk folder at Gmail, it’s absolutely possible. I have many clients who followed my advice and did it. Some of these clients were simply warming up new IPs and domains and needed to establish a reputation. Others were trying to repair a reputation. In both cases, the fixes are similar.

When I asked colleagues how they handled warmup at Gmail their answers were surprisingly similar to one another. They’re also very consistent with what I’ve seen work for clients.

Read More

Google Postmaster bad IP reputation

There are widespread reports this morning (9/11/17) that Google postmaster tools is showing bad IP reputation for IPs starting on 9/9. This issue is affecting just about everyone. Looking through my client’s postmaster pages, I’m seeing red for IP reputation on every client. Even my clients with generally good reputation are seeing bad reputation since 9/9. 

This looks like a reporting or a display error on the part of Google. Many people who are reporting the bad IP reputation are not seeing any significant change in Gmail deliverability.
Looking through client data it appears that domain reputation reporting stopped on 9/8. I am seeing FBL reports for 9/9 and 9/10, for some but not all clients.
My current read on the situation is that something broke internally with the Gmail postmaster reporting. This does not currently appear to be affecting delivery of mail. (If anyone sees differently, drop me an email or tweet me @wise_laura).
I know folks are making sure Google knows. I know that some Gmail folks were directly notified and another Google person is active on Mailop. And we have confirmation that they are aware and are working on fixing it. I will let you know if I hear of a fix timeline.
EDIT: It’s been fixed. Google even fixed the older data. Same client, screenshot from this morning.

 

Read More

Improving Gmail Delivery

Lately I’m hearing a lot of people talk about delivery problems at Gmail. I’ve written quite a bit about Gmail (Another way Gmail is different, Gmail filtering in a nutshell, Poor delivery at Gmail but no where else, Insight into Gmail filtering) over the last year and a half or so. But those articles all focus on different parts of Gmail delivery and it’s probably time for a summary type post.

Read More