"Suspicious Link" Message in Gmail-- Is my domain too new to use in emails?

magicfluffer

I recently set up a contact form campaign with GSA Website Contact. I submitted approximately 4,000 contact form requests within 12 hours, and have gotten replies from a number of recipients that my domain causes a "Suspicious link: Untrusted site..." error in Gmail when clicked. I have verified the issue myself.

I registered domain.co and 301-redirected it to my main website, domain.com. I think Google saw a recently registered domain.co being used to send messages regarding a well-known domain.com and assumed it must be untrustworthy?

My questions:

• Is it bad to 301-redirect the domain in my contact form emails to my money site? 
• Should I only use domains that are completely different from my money site-- ie no moneysite.co, moneysite.info, etc.
• Are newly registered domains likely to create issues?

I feel like I know the answers to most of these but am curious what the community has to say. 

loopline

I ONLY use 301 to my money site, in fact I would NOT recommend linking directly to your money site.  You will either run into hosting complaints, registrar issues or registry issues.  

Use redirects, its the best way, IMHO to go. 

Using different domains/tlds I don't think matters. 

New domains are an issue.  you should research blacklists and what ones really matter and what dont. 

But anyway any new domain that gets registered automatically goes on a blacklist for the first 5 days. 

If you are just starting out its hard to wait 5 days but may be worth it.  Once your rolling I always keep backup domains registered.  So as soon as one gets used a new one gets registered so its always aging.   This is done for each project/client. 

Another issue is you need to make sure your money site and redirect site have proper SSL certificates.  Not self signed ones, but like ones from Lets Encrypt or similar. 

Google will give link warnings to sites without SSL. 

Also its probably worth checking that your redirect site isn't hosted on a blacklisted ip.  You can us MX toolbox or similar, they even offer auto monitoring for up to X domains/ips which can be handy. 

I can't think of anything else that would do it necessarily, but thats not to say it couldn't. I mean if your site was in like pharma or gambling I guess it could say that.  I would google what causes suspicious links in gmail and then make sure you tick off all the boxes to avoid that. 

magicfluffer

Thanks, this is very helpful. I Googled the issue and it appears to be a rare occurrence with many possible causes. My guess still is that <5 day domain + no SSL caused the issue. 

I would definitely encourage users to always check their contact form emails in Gmail to ensure this isn't happening unknowingly.