SPF record lists the same sender twice
Updated
1% of the 793 domains we could check get a warning for this. Sample: the first 1,000 domains by rank in the Majestic Million, checked on 2026-10-12. How we measured
What this check looks for
The same entry appears more than once in your SPF record. It has no extra effect, and if it is one that costs a DNS lookup it brings you closer to the limit for nothing.
Why it matters
Duplicates are usually a sign that two people edited the record without seeing each other's change — the wasted lookup matters, and so does the confusion the next time someone edits it.
When the check passes, your report says: “Every entry in the SPF record appears once”.
What it costs your score
When this check fails it removes 3 points from your Email authentication score, before the status, confidence and repeat multipliers are applied. Email authentication carries a weight of 15 in the overall score.
It shares the email-auth.spf family ceiling of 35 points: however many findings that family produces, together they cannot remove more than that from Email authentication. One underlying problem showing up in several places is still one problem.
- Severity
- low
- Default confidence
- confirmed
- Status when triggered
- warn
- Deduction
- 3 points
- Family cap
- email-auth.spf · 35
- Category
- Email authentication
- Module
- Email spf
- Fix owned by
- dns host
- In the ruleset since
- 2026.09
How to fix it
Delete the repeated entry.
It cannot change the outcome and, for lookup mechanisms, it spends part of your ten-lookup budget.
Remove the second and any later copy of
‹mechanism›from the record.Re-publish the record as a single TXT string.
How to confirm it worked
dig +short TXT ‹domain› — confirm ‹mechanism› appears once
A named slot like ‹domain› — and the braces left in the configuration below — is filled in with your own values when this rule appears on a report.
Technical detail
‹domain› repeats the mechanism ‹mechanism› ‹occurrences› times. RFC 7208 §4.6.2 evaluates terms left to right and stops at the first match, so a repeat can never change the result. When the repeated term is include, a, mx, ptr or exists, every copy is still counted against the ten-lookup limit of §4.6.4.
Standards and references
- RFC 7208 §4.6.2 — Mechanisms § 4.6.2
- RFC 7208 §4.6.4 — DNS Lookup Limits § 4.6.4
Test this on your domain
Run the check that produces this finding, on its own, against any domain.