Domain Reputation: How to Check It and What to Do When It's Burned

How to diagnose domain reputation on Yandex and Mail.ru when Google Postmaster Tools cannot help, and the route back to the inbox.

If your prospects sit on Yandex 360 or Mail.ru — and in Russian B2B most of them do — there is no ready-made dashboard that tells you whether your domain reputation is damaged. Google Postmaster Tools, the backbone of every Western deliverability guide, only reports on Gmail, so it is blind to the inboxes that actually matter here. The working method is your own diagnostics: test mailboxes on Yandex and Mail.ru, control sends, and careful reading of the bounce messages the receiving servers send back.

The signature symptom of a burned domain is simple: your emails land in spam for everyone, including fresh addresses you are contacting for the first time, while SPF, DKIM and DMARC are correctly configured and the message itself is a specific, addressed business proposal. If the diagnosis is confirmed, the route is one: a full sending pause of two to four weeks, a cleanup of dead and silent addresses, then a step-by-step return of volume — effectively a second warm-up. In severe cases, where the domain sits in blacklists and complaints continue even after a pause, the honest conclusion is uncomfortable: recovery takes months with no guaranteed result, and a new domain warmed up from zero is cheaper in time.

Rule out the simple causes first: content and authentication

In most teardowns we run, "damaged reputation" turns out to be either raw copy or broken technical setup. Before you declare a domain hopeless, check three things.

First, DNS records. SPF lists the servers allowed to send mail for your domain, DKIM signs each message with a key, and DMARC tells the receiving side what to do with a message that fails those checks. If any record is missing or malformed, filters cut your emails regardless of reputation. The setup details for Russian mail providers are covered in our notes at OT9 field notes — verify against that before drawing any other conclusions.

Second, the emails themselves. A mass, impersonal message with an advertising angle gets flagged by filters even without any domain history. Third, the list: if a large share of addresses does not exist, providers penalize the sender within the first few campaigns.

How to check reputation without Western tools

The diagnostic protocol that works for this market fits into a single day.

Test mailboxes. Register one address on Yandex and one on Mail.ru — these are your control points. Send them a normal email from your working domain and see where it lands. Then send the same message from a known-clean mailbox, for example a personal Yandex account. If the personal email reaches the inbox and the corporate one goes to spam, the problem is the domain or its configuration, not the copy.

Filter behavior. Check whether even a reply to an incoming email from the test mailbox lands in spam. If a conversation started by the recipient still sinks, the filter distrusts the domain itself, not the campaign.

Server responses. Open your bounces and sending logs. Yandex and Mail.ru servers state the reason in their refusals: rate limits exceeded, user complaints, suspected spam. This is the receiving side speaking directly — read it more carefully than any external checker.

External checkers — with a caveat. Blacklist lookup services will show whether your domain or IP appears in international databases. Useful as a supplement, but remember: Yandex and Mail.ru run their own filters and their own internal lists, which no external service can see.

The recovery route

If diagnostics confirm reputation is the problem, act in this order.

Step 1. Full pause. Stop all sending from the domain for two to four weeks. Every new email from a domain with a bad history makes things worse — filters weight fresh complaints more heavily than old ones. Continuing to send "just a little" is the worst option: you feed the filter new negative signals.

Step 2. Clean the list. Remove every address that produced a bounce, everyone who has not opened or replied across several touches, and everyone who asked not to be contacted. Keep an opt-out registry and delete a contact on first request — this is deliverability hygiene and also sensible data practice: a named person's role and work email count as personal data under Russian law, so it is safer to work with role-based corporate mailboxes and information from public sources.

Step 3. Bring volume back in steps. After the pause, start with single-digit daily volumes aimed at your warmest addresses — people who replied before. Growth should be no faster than during the initial domain warm-up. The logic is the same one we describe in our warm-up notes: the filter needs to re-observe a stable, predictable pattern that does not irritate recipients.

Step 4. Control at every step. The test mailboxes from the section above run permanently. If a new volume tier drops you into spam, roll the volume back and wait another week.

A separate word on complaints. If your emails are addressed business proposals to specific companies about their own operations, that is one story. Mass promotional blasts without recipient consent are another: under Russian advertising rules, distributing advertising by email requires prior consent, and corporate fines for violations are substantial. Regulatory complaints arise precisely against impersonal promotional streams — and the same stream destroys domain reputation. So "write specifically and to the point" is not a slogan; it is the shared root of both problems.

When a new domain is the rational choice

Recovery is not always the rational path. Register a new domain if:

• after a month of pause and a careful return, emails still land in spam at both providers;
• the domain sent mass impersonal campaigns for months — the complaint history is too heavy;
• the business cannot wait: you need pipeline now, not after a quarter of experiments.

The new domain must not look like a clone of the old one to the filters: a different subdomain or a sibling domain, separate DNS records, a separate warm-up and — most importantly — different sending discipline, otherwise within a month you will have a second burned domain. And never run cold outreach from your company's primary domain: the reputation of the mailbox that carries contracts and invoices is worth more than any campaign. How this separation works inside a running setup is described in the section on how the engagement runs.

One last point. Since February 2024, Google and Yahoo require bulk senders to have SPF, DKIM and DMARC configured, one-click unsubscribe, and a complaint rate below 0.3%. If any part of your list is international, this minimum is mandatory; for a purely Russian list it is still a useful benchmark — Yandex and Mail.ru follow the same logic, just with their own, non-public thresholds.

FAQ

Can I check domain reputation through Google Postmaster Tools?

Only if your recipients use Gmail. For Russian B2B, where prospects sit on Yandex 360 and Mail.ru, the tool shows nothing. The substitute is test mailboxes at both providers, bounce analysis and the control sends described in this article.

How long does reputation recovery take?

At minimum a month to six weeks: two to four weeks of pause plus a gradual return of volume. With a heavy complaint history it takes longer, with no guarantee. That is why for serious damage we honestly recommend a new domain — faster and more predictable.

Will switching email service or IP address help?

Not if the problem is the domain. Yandex and Mail.ru filters evaluate primarily the sender domain and its history, not the specific server. Switching providers makes sense only when the technical setup is broken or the IP itself is "dirty" — and that is visible in the bounces.

Emails reach the inbox but nobody replies. Is that reputation?

Almost certainly not. If delivery is fine and replies are absent, the question is for the list, the offer and the copy. Reputation determines where the email lands, not whether the recipient finds it interesting.

Can a new domain go straight to working volumes?

No. To filters, a domain with no history is nearly as suspicious as one with a bad history. Every new domain goes through warm-up: technical records, small volumes, stepwise growth over several weeks.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your situation, send us a sequence and a description of the symptoms — we will look at where delivery breaks and propose a route. You can leave a request through the contact form.