How does engagement weighting differ between Gmail and Outlook?

Gmail and Outlook weight engagement signals very differently in their filtering decisions.

Gmail prioritizes user behavior. Opens, clicks, replies, and spam folder rescues directly influence where your mail lands. Their machine learning systems continuously adapt based on how their users interact with mail from your domain.

Outlook relies more heavily on infrastructure signals. IP reputation, blocklist status, and SmartScreen scoring play larger roles. User engagement matters, but Outlook gives more weight to technical reputation indicators than Gmail does.

This difference means senders can have divergent deliverability at each provider. Strong engagement helps Gmail placement, while clean infrastructure helps Outlook placement.

Gmail inspects how merchants react to your cargo. Outlook inspects your ship's registration and history. Both matter, but each emphasizes different evidence.