basil.com, a real published series. Every name is invented.
Google said 10%.
On 63 emails. That is not a reputation.
- 01
The day had 63 Gmail deliveries.
Google counts only the engaged, DKIM-signed, personal-Gmail inboxes among them. The bottom of its fraction is smaller than that; it never says how small.
- 02
One report moves a fraction that small by whole points.
With at most 63 counted inboxes, a single complaint is worth at least 1.6 points. 10.00% is at most 6 people.
- 03
Google itself named nothing.
0 identifiers published that day. Google generates a report only above "a certain volume of mails as well as in distinct user spam reports". This day did not clear its own bar.
- 04
Read the count before the rate.
The 4 red days here are the 4 smallest sends: 91, 81, 113, 63 deliveries. SpamSpike stays silent on a day under 35% of the domain's own median volume.
A small day can still hold a real complaint. What it cannot hold is a trend.
Every sentence above, in Google’s own words.4 sources, each dated
“The spam rate is the percent of your messages that are delivered to engaged recipient's Inbox and then marked as spam by the recipient.”
“Postmaster Tools displays the spam rate of DKIM-authenticated messages sent to Gmail accounts.”
“For a given day's traffic, FBL reports are generated only if a given Identifier is present in a certain volume of mails as well as in distinct user spam reports.”
“Keep spam rates reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher.”