Create the record

Once SPF and DKIM are in place, you configure DMARC by adding policies to your domain's DNS records in the form of TXT records (just like with SPF or ADSP).

Important: Before creating a DMARC record for your Google Apps domain, you must first set up DKIM authentication. If you fail to set up DKIM first, email from services such as Google Calendar will fail mail authentication and will not be delivered to users.

Follow the instructions to create a TXT record with the appropriate name and value, using the specific instructions for popular domain hosts. The TXT record name should be "_dmarc.your_domain.com." where "your_domain.com" is replaced with your actual domain name. You can also review the limitations with some domain hosts.

Here are common tags used in DMARC TXT records:

See the DMARC Tag Registry for other available tags.

Google does not support the DMARC ruf tag for the distribution of forensic reports.

Only the v (version) and p (policy) tags are required. Three possible policy settings, or message dispositions, are available:

• none - Take no action. Log affected messages on the daily report only.
• quarantine - Mark affected messages as spam.
• reject - Cancel the message at the SMTP layer.

Alignment mode refers to the precision with which sender records are compared to SPF and DKIM signatures, with the two possible values being relaxed or strict. represented by "r" and "s" respectively. In short, relaxed allows partial matches, such as subdomains of a given domain, while strict requires an exact match.

Make sure to include your email address with the optional rua tag to receive the daily reports.

Example records

Example report

Deploy slowly

We strongly recommend ramping up DMARC use slowly by employing these policies in this order. First, monitor your traffic and look for anomalies in the reports, such as messages that are not yet being signed or are perhaps being spoofed. Then, when you're comfortable with the results, change the TXT record policy setting from "none" to "quarantine." Once again, review the results, this time in both your spam catch and in the daily DMARC reports. Finally, once you're absolutely sure all of your messages are signed, change the policy setting to "reject" to make full use of DMARC. Revisit reports to ensure your results are acceptable.

Similarly, the optional pct tag can be used to stage and sample your DMARC deployment. Since 100% is the default, passing "pct=20" in your DMARC TXT record results in one-fifth of all messages affected by the policy actually receiving the disposition instead of all of them. This setting is especially useful once you elect to quarantine and reject mail. Start with a lower percent to begin with and increase it every few days.

So a conservative deployment cycle would resemble:

1. Monitor all.
2. Quarantine 1%.
3. Quarantine 5%.
4. Quarantine 10%.
5. Quarantine 25%.
6. Quarantine 50%.
7. Quarantine all.
8. Reject 1%.
9. Reject 5%.
10. Reject 10%.
11. Reject 25%.
12. Reject 50%.
13. Reject all.

Attempt to remove the percentages as quickly as possible to complete the deployment.

As always, review your daily reports.