Sharing access to Google Postmaster Tools

As a delivery consultant, I always ask clients to share their Google postmaster reports with me. As Gmail is one of the bigger delivery challenges for a lot of senders, having access to the postmaster tools helps tease out issues. I had some issues earlier this week getting access to tools and so brought up a conversation on one of the delivery lists. The nice folks there helped me get it solved.
A few hours later someone asked me how do I get access and I thought that was a brilliant idea for a blog post today.

Site owner grants access.

The owner of the postmaster tools account goes to http://postmaster.google.com and hovers over the domain to share. A context menu pops up.
PostmasterTools1
Click on the “Manage Users” link.
PostmasterTools2
Adding a user is as simple as clicking on the big red button and typing in the users email address. This address must be either a gmail.com address or a domain hosted at Google apps.
Once that’s done, tell the user they have permission to access the document.

User adds domain to their dashboard.

Before the data is visible, the user must add the domain to their dashboard. Again, click the big red button in the bottom corner.
A dialog box pops up asking for the domain used to authenticate your email.
PostmasterTools3
Type in the domain name. It should now appear in their dashboard.

Things to remember.

Only gmail.com or google apps hosted email addresses can be used for the Postmaster tools. Those of us using our own domains on different hosting must create a gmail.com address in order to see Postmaster tools.
Postmaster tools only provide data after a threshold volume is reached. We have no data for wordtothewise.com, for instance, because we simply don’t send enough mail.
Happy Investigating!

Related Posts

Gmail showing authentication results to endusers

A bit of older news, but worth a blog post. Early in August, Gmail announced changes to the inbox on both the web interface and the android client. They will be pushing authentication results into the interface, so end users can see which emails are authenticated.

These are not deliverability changes, the presence or absence of authentication will not affect inbox delivery. And the gmail Gmail support pages clarify that lack of authentication is not a sign that mail is spam.
This isn’t a huge change for most ESPs and most senders. In fact, Gmail has reported more than 95% of their mail is authenticated with either SPF or DKIM. Now, Gmail does a “best guess” SPF – if it looks like an IP should be authorized to send mail for a domain (like the sending IP is the same as the MX) then it’s considered authenticated.
It’s good to see authentication information being passed to the end user.

Read More

Google Postmaster Tools

Earlier this month Google announced a new set of tools for senders at their Postmaster Tools site. To get into the site you need to login to Google, but they also have a handy support page that doesn’t require a login for folks who want to see what the page is about.
We did register, but don’t send enough mail to get any data back from Google. However, the nice folks at SendGrid were kind enough to share their experiences with me and show me what the site looked like with real data, when I spoke at their recent customer meeting.
Who can register?
Anyone can register for Google Postmaster tools. All you need is the domain authenticated by DKIM (the d= value) or by SPF (the Return Path value).
Who can see data?
Google is only sharing data with trusted domains and only if a minimum volume is sent from those domains. They don’t describe what a trusted domain is, but I expect the criteria include a domain with some history (no brand new domains) and a reasonable track record (some or all of the mail is good).
For ESPs who want to monitor all the mail they send, every mail needs to be signed with a common d= domain. Individual customers that want their own d= can do so. These customers can register for their own access to just their mail.
ESPs that want to do this need to sign with the common key first, and then with the customer’s more selective key.
How does it work?
Google collects data from DKIM and/or SPF authenticated mail, aggregates it and presents it to a Google user that has authenticated the domain.
How do I authenticate?

Read More

Responsive design just got easier at Gmail

Today Gmail announced they are supporting media queries in Gmail and Google Inbox. This should simplify the creation of emails for multiple platforms. The full list of supported rules can be found on the Google Developer Site.

Read More