• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Email senders targeting personal Gmail accounts now have a way to make sure the messages are arriving.

Google’s Postmaster Tools have a dashboard that shows information on spam rate, reputation, message authentication and delivery errors. 

Users must have a Google Account or a Google Workspace account, and then must set up Postmaster Tools for their domains. 

First, users add the DKIM (d=) domain or the SPF (Return-Path) domain. If the two domains are the same, Postmaster Tools will use messages signed by SPF, DKIM, or both, for dashboard data, Google writes in its guide.

Of course, the process begins by signing in to Postmaster Tools. 

The sender must also enter the domain, with one or both of the above tools, and then click next to the Verify your domain window.

The next step: “Use Postmaster Tools to monitor information about outgoing email that you send to personal Gmail accounts, and about the domains and IP addresses you use to send email. The information in Postmaster Tools helps you meet Gmail’s requirements for sending email to personal Gmail accounts, described in our Email sender guidelines and Email sender guidelines FAQ.”

Next, users will be asked to verify their sending domains, although they can click “Not now.”

To verify, users go to the Verify your domain window and copy the text in the TXT record field, then log in to their domain provider and add the copied text text to their domain’s DNS records, Google says in the instructions.

Have fun.