Why is an expected email going to spam?

Sometimes Gmail might incorrectly mark messages coming from senders outside of your domain as spam. As a G Suite administrator, there are a few things you can do to quickly fix this problem and prevent it from happening in the future.

Take the following actions when Gmail incorrectly marks some or all of your external incoming email as spam.

Troubleshooting tips:

For all G Suite Users

Follow these recommendations and encourage all your users to do the same:
- Mark incorrectly classified messages as Not spam
- Gmail uses machine learning to better understand your preferences and what constitutes spam. When you manually mark a message as not spam, you teach Gmail how to handle messages addressed to you.
Add trusted senders to your personal contacts list
- Users in your domain can manage their personal contacts list in Gmail. When a user adds an external address to their contacts list, it lets Gmail know to not mark their email as spam.

For G Suite Admins

Add trusted senders to the spam bypass filter
- Whitelisting is adding a domain to a list of approved senders bypassing Gmail spam filters. Adding a domain or specific email addresses to your G Suite spam filter reduces the risk of future email from the sender not arriving to your users’ inboxes.

For External Senders

Authenticate outgoing email
- Tell your trusted customers, suppliers, and others that they can use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to authenticate their sent email. Google uses these email protection standards to verify that messages are authentic.
Follow Gmail bulk-sender guidelines
- For surveys, flyers, or other mass communications through Gmail or a third-party email system, follow the Gmail bulk senders guidelines. They reduce the risk of email being marked as spam or having your domain blocked by a recipient’s mail system.