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Why does Gmail hate my domain?

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Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#71
post #48

Notice the comment on the story: "I had the exact same problems in the past. For me it helped just to register and immediately cancel a trial of Google Apps for the domain. It’s annoying to have this as a necessary step but at least it was like that done in just a few minutes (after I tried to find a contact email of Google for a much longer time). I tried it because I had other domains on the same server which didn’…

Thanks, may have to pay Google the $5 (or thereabouts?) to host my mail for a month and consider it a cost of freedom from them long term. After 2+ years of hosting my domain myself, it doesn't seem possible to build up enough reputation with them personally.

If the Google Apps anecdote is true, it's likely to be a design flaw in their anti-spam systems - think of the number of spammers who could register domains, associate them with a $5 google apps account, and spam millions of Gmail recipients. If you think about the kind of metrics/outcomes the Gmail anti-spam team uses to measure success, it's hard to imagine a scenario where that would be good for them.

What this looks like to me is a reputation problem with one or more domains, either in your headers or your message content.

From a domain reputation perspective, you don't generally need to 'build' reputation in the same way you often do with IP reputation; rather, Gmail tends to tag domains with negative reputation only when they've observed unusually bad behavior associated with the domain.

Sometimes this can happen due to domain forgery or spoofing. Sometimes it's because a sender is doing overly aggressive email marketing. Sometimes it's just because your domain shows up in someone else's bulk email.

With full authentication, spoofing is unlikely; I also don't see any indication you're doing email marketing here, and your IP 88.198.5.136 doesn't appear to generate much more than a trickle of volume. So - perhaps the latter? Has anyone included a link to one of your blog posts in an email newsletter, for example?

It would also be helpful to see full headers and content; it's great you're doing SPF/DKIM/DMARC, but they're not going to prevent all issues - there might be something elsewhere in your message that gives us a better idea where the problem is.

Finally, keep in mind that anti-spam systems are highly dynamic, and results can change - sometimes in as little as a few minutes - based on the latest data feeding into the system. If you're lucky, you might see this resolve on its own fairly quickly.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#72
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That...doesn't make any sense. The author doesn't appear to be spamming or doing any kind of mailing list traffic. He is an individual communicating with other individuals. That's kind of the whole point of this Internet thing we have going here. Besides, he's only being singled out by Google; no other providers seem to have a problem with his domain and Google's own headers show that everything is fine.

First, it's about triggers. You are not allowed to carry guns on an airplane. "But I didn't shoot anybody." You didn't, but the people who do, carry guns. It's a negative trigger. Second, when a technology becomes extremely mainstream, it begins to generate federation and structure around it. It's called evolution. This is higher in services where stakes are higher, and where giving an individual excess power can scr…

TL;DR: The Internet is over.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#73
post #70
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Your antitrust case hinges on the fact that a random commenter on a blog suggested their personal folk remedy of signing up for Google Apps. I would love to see an antitrust that has been lost over less. Again, Google accepts email from a huge number of sources, including major competitors, of which the OP is not one. Many people here even report running their own mail servers and experiencing success sending to Gmai…

[deleted]

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#74
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I include graphics in my mail, are the graphics hosted by an http server or included in each mail?

it is generally up to you, you can inline them (MIME/base64? in the message) or remotely serve. it'll usually serve remote http pixels for "open tracking" either way though

That's my whole point.

I regard such tracking pixels as morally reprehensible. While I know most of my subscribers will disable remote images anyway, quite likely they would think poorly of me for serving them.

All the stuff I read about email marketing is all about all the kewel things one can do with email bugs.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#75
I'm still wondering how does it happen that I never ever had as many problems with spam as I have with anti-spam systems and goddamn google in the first place. Actually, at this point it well might be only google. And it's hard to ignore when more and more emails in your contact book have "gmail" in them. Makes it seem that something as simple and fundamental as e-mail now belongs to google. Just ridiculous.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check the IP against the spam blacklists: http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx You might have to spin up a bunch of servers to find one which doesn't have a blacklisted IP. Then you have to build the IP's "reputation" with the various providers before you can send a significant amount of email through it.

These days, there are only a handful of IP-based blacklists where a listing result in more than low single-digit impact to your delivery rate; moreover, among industry insiders, Gmail isn't known to use any public IP-based blacklist for deliverability.

>Gmail isn't known to use any public IP-based blacklist for deliverability

Good to know! I bet they have their own internal ranking system which is far more accurate than the public blacklists.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#77
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is generally up to you, you can inline them (MIME/base64? in the message) or remotely serve. it'll usually serve remote http pixels for "open tracking" either way though

That's my whole point. I regard such tracking pixels as morally reprehensible. While I know most of my subscribers will disable remote images anyway, quite likely they would think poorly of me for serving them. All the stuff I read about email marketing is all about all the kewel things one can do with email bugs.

consider using your own software, but relaying through mailgun then. dumb relay, other than bounce management and notifications it won't try to append garbage to your messages.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#78
post #33

Network effect. Google blocks non-GMail email, eventually you are forced to use them as your service provider. Can either be deliberate or happy unexpected outcome for Google.

I use Google for my email, and they still count some as spam. Hell, it is sent from Google's own servers! It still doesn't help.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#79
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is generally up to you, you can inline them (MIME/base64? in the message) or remotely serve. it'll usually serve remote http pixels for "open tracking" either way though

That's my whole point. I regard such tracking pixels as morally reprehensible. While I know most of my subscribers will disable remote images anyway, quite likely they would think poorly of me for serving them. All the stuff I read about email marketing is all about all the kewel things one can do with email bugs.

You regard finding out whether someone you have sent a marketing email to actually opened that message as 'morally reprehensible' somehow? I know that blanket surveillance and government intrusion is a bad thing, to be minimised, but I'm not sure that also makes recipient tracking for one's own marketing purposes evil. If done right, cookies, email bugs and similar technologies are benign, or even beneficial to the recipient... It's all about finding out what the customer actually wants by observing what they do, since when you ask them, they often don't really know.

Re: Why does Gmail hate my domain?

#80
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my whole point. I regard such tracking pixels as morally reprehensible. While I know most of my subscribers will disable remote images anyway, quite likely they would think poorly of me for serving them. All the stuff I read about email marketing is all about all the kewel things one can do with email bugs.

You regard finding out whether someone you have sent a marketing email to actually opened that message as 'morally reprehensible' somehow? I know that blanket surveillance and government intrusion is a bad thing, to be minimised, but I'm not sure that also makes recipient tracking for one's own marketing purposes evil. If done right, cookies, email bugs and similar technologies are benign, or even beneficial to the r…

Not OP, but -- Yes. Morally reprehensible because it removes choice from the user/customer.

I might tolerate your initiation of contact, but I will not tolerate your observation of my reaction, without consent.

For this reason, I will not click on links with obvious tracking parameters. I strip them out first, or come to get the information some other way.

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