Domain Reputation

Domain reputation is a composite score or classification assigned to a domain name by email providers, security vendors, and web filtering services, based on historical and behavioral signals including sending volume, spam complaint rates, [[dmarc|DMARC]]/[[spf-record|SPF]]/[[dkim|DKIM]] alignment, age, registration patterns, blacklist presence, web content categories, and association with [[domain-abuse|abuse]]. A poor domain reputation causes emails to land in spam folders, blocks web traffic through security gateways, and can trigger takedown procedures. Reputation data is maintained by services like Spamhaus, Cisco Talos, Google Safe Browsing, and Barracuda. New domains and domains with sudden traffic spikes typically start with low reputation and must build trust over time.