Google Postmaster Tools v2: domain reputation, compliance status and what to watch

Maybe your v1 script stopped finding domainReputation. Or a compliance status row in Postmaster Tools says "Needs work". This guide covers what v2 gives you, how to read each row, and what to fix first. Every fact here comes from Google's own pages and API documents, checked on 13 October 2026.

Why can't I find domain reputation in Postmaster Tools?

Google's Postmaster Tools API v2 has no domain or IP reputation statistic, which is why v1 scripts that read domainReputation find nothing. Google's published list of v2 statistics has eight entries, and none of them is reputation. The v1 API still describes domainReputation and ipReputations with the ratings HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW and BAD.

Google says this is on purpose. Its Gmail Help page on the deprecation of the old Postmaster Tools interface says the v2 API "will encompass all existing v1 functionality, except Domain and IP reputation." About the web dashboards, it says: "All the dashboards in old Postmaster Tools are available in v2, with the exception of the Domain and IP Reputation dashboards, which will be retired."

Google gives its reasons on the same page. Among them: "The current dashboard can be misleading as reputation is only one of many factors affecting deliverability." It also says "The current Reputation dashboard is being replaced with a new, more intuitive version", without a date.

Two timing points from that page. Google is "postponing the deprecation of the legacy Postmaster Tools web interface", so reputation may still show in the legacy interface for now, but not in v2. And "the current v1 API will be retired", with no date given. The migration guide doesn't give one either, so plan to move to v2 rather than wait.

The practical point: any monitoring you automate has to watch what v2 does return.

One related note. If Gmail refuses your sends with a 429 error, that is a sending limit, not a reputation problem. Postmaster Tools will not explain it.

What does Postmaster Tools v2 show?

Google Postmaster Tools shows dashboards in the web UI and eight statistics in the v2 API. Here is each list as Google publishes it.

Dashboards, from Google's Postmaster Tools dashboards help page: Compliance status, Spam rate, IP Reputation, Domain Reputation, Feedback loop, Authentication, Encryption and Delivery errors. The two reputation dashboards are the ones Google says will be retired. You can pick the last 7, 30, 60, 90 or 120 days.

API v2 statistics, from the discovery document:

Results come back DAILY (the default) or OVERALL for the whole date range.

One detail is worth knowing. The delivery error statistics take an error_reason filter, and the reasons Google lists for rejected mail include low_domain_reputation and low_ip_reputation. So the API no longer gives you a reputation rating, but it can tell you when mail was rejected for reputation.

Three limits from Google apply to all of this:

• Dashboard data covers only messages sent to personal Gmail accounts.
• It is not real time. "Typically, the data is updated within 24 hours but can take longer."
• On low-volume days the dashboard "might not include all data", so some days are missing.

For B2B outreach, where most of your mail goes to company inboxes, that first limit matters most. Postmaster Tools may show you very little.

How do I read compliance status?

The Compliance status dashboard in Postmaster Tools has one row per Gmail sender requirement, and each row is Compliant, Needs work or No data found. Google groups the requirements like this, and the sender guidelines say what each one asks for:

Google's FAQ describes a bulk sender as one that sends close to 5,000 messages or more to personal Gmail accounts in 24 hours, with messages from the same primary domain counted together. The sender guidelines say the requirements apply from 1 February 2024.

If you send from Google Workspace, Google's servers make the connection, so the encryption and reverse DNS rows are about Google's side. The rows you control are your domain's records: SPF that includes Google, DKIM signing for your domain, and a DMARC record. Pedibee's domain health check looks at all three.

The three states, as Google describes them:

• Compliant: your setup meets the requirement, so no action is needed.
• Needs work: you must update your email system and verify that outgoing messages meet the requirement.
• No data found: not enough email is available to evaluate the requirement yet.

Two rules change how you read the rows. First, in the dashboard, status is reported only for the primary domain, using data from its subdomains too. Google's example: adding email.solarmora.com shows the status for all of solarmora.com. Second, DNS rows reflect the settings Google saw when your emails were received, not your current records.

In the API, GET v2/domains/{domain}/complianceStatus returns rows named SPF, DKIM, SPF_AND_DKIM, DMARC_POLICY, DMARC_ALIGNMENT, MESSAGE_FORMATTING, DNS_RECORDS, ENCRYPTION, USER_REPORTED_SPAM_RATE, ONE_CLICK_UNSUBSCRIBE and HONOR_UNSUBSCRIBE, each COMPLIANT or NEEDS_WORK (or STATE_UNSPECIFIED). If you query a subdomain, the response can also include subdomainComplianceData for that subdomain alongside the primary domain's complianceData.

Why does one-click unsubscribe say "Needs work" when I have it?

Google's help page gives one cause: recipients mark many messages that were sent without one-click unsubscribe as spam. Your newsletter may carry the headers while another stream from the same domain does not. Google suggests the Feedback loop dashboard to find which messages are being reported.

The sender guidelines define what one-click means for marketing and subscribed messages: both a List-Unsubscribe header with a URL and List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click, plus a clearly visible unsubscribe link in the body.

Honor unsubscribe is a separate row. It asks whether people who unsubscribe actually stop getting your mail, not whether the header exists. Google's help page says the row can show Needs work "if you don't honor the unsubscribe requests within 48 hours", and recommends removing the recipient from your mailing list within 48 hours.

The API names the reasons as NO_UNSUB_GENERAL, NO_UNSUB_SPAM_REPORTS and NO_UNSUB_PROMO_SPAM_REPORTS, and for honor unsubscribe NOT_HONORING, NOT_HONORING_TOO_FEW_CAMPAIGNS and NOT_HONORING_TOO_MANY_CAMPAIGNS. Google does not document how it decides each reason code, so read them as labels only.

I fixed it. Why hasn't it changed?

Google says compliance status can take up to 7 days to reflect a fix, and DNS rows only change once new mail arrives with the corrected records. In Google's words, "it can take up to 7 days for changes to be reflected in the dashboard", so check the Compliance status dashboard again after 7 days. Google also notes that compliance status uses slightly different datasets than the other dashboards, so its numbers can differ a little from, say, the Spam rate dashboard.

What is the deliverability analysis in v2?

The deliverability analysis in Postmaster Tools v2 is a diagnostic under the Compliance status dashboard that gives recommendations. Google's help page says it covers five things:

• sending too little email
• messages that fail to deliver
• spam over the recommended threshold
• recipients who don't open or interact with your mail, and recipients who want more of it
• not meeting the sender guidelines

The API has matching reasons: MESSAGE_VOLUME_LOW, SMTP_ERRORS_HIGH, SENDER_NOT_COMPLIANT, SPAM_RATE_HIGH, USER_FEEDBACK_NEGATIVE, USER_FEEDBACK_LOW and USER_FEEDBACK_POSITIVE. In the API this verdict is marked Developer Preview, so it may change or not be available to every project. Google does not publish how it works these out, and we have not tested it, so we can't tell you what triggers each one.

What should I watch instead of reputation? Spam rate first

Watch the user-reported spam rate first. Google's sender guidelines FAQ says to keep it below 0.1% and to prevent it from ever reaching 0.3% or higher. Google calls the impact "graduated":

• Above 0.1%, it already has "a negative impact on email inbox delivery for bulk senders."
• Above 0.3%, bulk senders are "ineligible for mitigation" until their rate stays below 0.3% for 7 consecutive days.
• Spam rate is calculated daily.

Read a low number with care. Google's help page warns that a spam rate can drop to zero after a period of high spam rates. Gmail may already be sending your messages to spam, so recipients rarely see them in the inbox to report them. A zero after a bad week is a warning, not a recovery.

After spam rate, watch the authentication pass rates for SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and the delivery error rate. Google gives no target numbers for these, so track the trend and look into any drop. If you use open tracking as a health signal, remember that many opens come from Apple Mail and security scanners, not people, while the Postmaster Tools spam rate is Google's own measure.

For developers: from trafficStats to domainStats.query

The migration guide maps the changes like this:

The migration guide talks about a start and end date. On the method's reference page, these go inside a required timeQuery field, next to the required metricDefinitions. pageSize defaults to 10 and caps at 200. This is the body shape Pedibee sends to read DKIM pass rates for a 30-day range (dates shown as an example):

{
  "metricDefinitions": [
    {
      "name": "dkim",
      "baseMetric": { "standardMetric": "AUTH_SUCCESS_RATE" },
      "filter": "auth_type = \"dkim\""
    }
  ],
  "timeQuery": {
    "dateRanges": {
      "dateRanges": [
        {
          "start": { "year": 2026, "month": 9, "day": 13 },
          "end": { "year": 2026, "month": 10, "day": 13 }
        }
      ]
    }
  },
  "pageSize": 200
}

For scopes, the query method accepts postmaster.traffic.readonly or the broader postmaster. Managing domains uses postmaster.domain.

When every call for a domain comes back 403 or 404, Pedibee treats it as "this domain isn't verified for this Google account". That is how we handle it, not a definition from Google.

How Pedibee shows Postmaster Tools data

Pedibee reads Postmaster Tools for you if you send from your own domain. You can connect Postmaster Tools in Pedibee like this:

1. Verify your domain at postmaster.google.com.
2. In Settings, Email account, click Connect Postmaster Tools next to the Gmail account, and sign in with the Google account that verified the domain. Pedibee asks only for read access to Postmaster data (postmaster.traffic.readonly), plus your Google account's email address so it can show which account is connected.
3. Pedibee loads the numbers right after you connect; click Refresh later to update them. It calls domainStats:query for the last 30 days of SPAM_RATE, DELIVERY_ERROR_RATE and AUTH_SUCCESS_RATE for SPF, DKIM and DMARC, plus complianceStatus.

The panel shows the latest spam rate with a day-by-day bar for the period, the three pass rates, the delivery error rate, and a tick or cross for each compliance row. If the domain isn't verified for that Google account, it says so and links to Postmaster Tools instead of showing empty charts. If Google has no numbers yet, it says that too. If you revoke access in your Google account, the connection is cleared, and disconnecting the Gmail removes it as well.

What Pedibee does not show: reputation (v2 has none), feedback loop and encryption statistics, and the deliverability analysis.

For the one-click unsubscribe row, Pedibee's campaign, sequence and marketing automation emails carry a visible unsubscribe line and a one-click List-Unsubscribe header. See one-click unsubscribe in Pedibee. The rest of the deliverability checks, warm-up, domain health and the inbox check, are on Pedibee's deliverability features, and how Pedibee sends at a human pace shows where they fit.

What Postmaster Tools can't tell you

Postmaster Tools has real gaps, and it helps to know them before you trust a chart:

• Only personal Gmail accounts. Nothing about Google Workspace recipients at other companies, and nothing about other mailbox providers.
• Low volume means gaps. Google may leave out data on days with little mail, so a small sender may see "No data found" everywhere.
• Not real time. Data usually arrives within 24 hours, and compliance changes can take up to 7 days to show.
• No reputation in the API. The closest v2 gets is a delivery error reason that names low domain or IP reputation.
• No published formula. Google does not explain how it reaches a "Needs work" verdict or a deliverability recommendation.

Sources

• Gmail Help, Learn about the deprecation of the old Postmaster Tools interface. No last-updated date shown; checked 13 Oct 2026.
• Gmail Help, Postmaster Tools dashboards. No last-updated date shown; checked 13 Oct 2026.
• Google for Developers, Migrate to Postmaster Tools API v2. Last updated 4 September 2026; checked 13 Oct 2026.
• Google for Developers, Method: domains.domainStats.query. Last updated 25 June 2026; checked 13 Oct 2026.
• Google, Postmaster Tools API v2 discovery document and v1 discovery document. Revision 20261011; checked 13 Oct 2026.
• Gmail Help, Email sender guidelines. No last-updated date shown; checked 13 Oct 2026.
• Gmail Help, Email sender guidelines FAQ. No last-updated date shown; checked 13 Oct 2026.