.gov is a generic top-level domain used by US government. Across 5,866 .gov addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026, 24.7% were invalid, 18.0% catch-all, 22.1% unknown and 34.7% confirmed valid. Catch-all and unknown together mean a large share cannot be confirmed.
The .gov row is all 5,866 addresses verified in the six months to October 2026; the other rows are the benchmarks from the same corpus. Risky and role results fill each row to 100%.
| Segment | Addresses | Invalid | Catch-all | Unknown | Confirmed valid |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .gov | 5,866 | 24.7% | 18.0% | 22.1% | 34.7% |
| All non-freemail domains (business and ISP) | 6,514,884 | 14.5% | 2.3% | 27.0% | 32.6% |
| Business domains only (consumer ISP and freemail excluded) | 1,269,919 | 22.9% | 9.4% | 22.5% | 40.3% |
| All freemail | 1,415,154 | 17.6% | 1.1% | 2.1% | 74.0% |
Non-freemail includes consumer ISP mailboxes; a business-only cut is on the benchmarks page. Method and every other cut: Lead List Quality Benchmarks 2026. Risky and role on the .gov row: 0.5%.
Government gateways answer probes clearly but staff turnover retires mailboxes, so invalid rates sit above the business average.
Government domains answer probes clearly, but staff turnover and reorganisations retire mailboxes, so the invalid rate sits above the business average. Role addresses are common and often unmonitored. Public bodies in the United States are reachable under CAN-SPAM with an opt-out; in the UK and EU the public-task basis does not cover marketing, and legitimate interest with an opt-out is the usual route for business-to-government outreach. Government mail is concentrated on a handful of large systems, which answer probes consistently, so the verdicts are reliable even where the invalid rate is high. Named contacts in government change roles on election and budget cycles, and procurement contacts in particular turn over quickly; a quarterly re-check matched to those cycles keeps a public-sector list usable.
On confirmed-invalid rate, .gov ranks 5 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .nz at 28.9%, ahead of .org at 24.6%.
On unknown rate, .gov ranks 9 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .fi at 22.1%, ahead of .us at 21.9%.
On confirmed-valid share, .gov ranks 18 of 23 country domains in the corpus, just behind .org at 36.2%, ahead of .us at 29.1%.
How to read these rates: they are BounceZero's probe outcomes on customer lists over April to October 2026, not a census of .gov mailboxes. Unknown and catch-all measure what verification could not confirm, which depends on the provider's gateway policy during the window as much as on the addresses. The lists are the ones customers chose to upload, so segments dominated by a few large uploads carry their age and source. Method and limitations: benchmarks page.
22.1% of .gov probes come back unconfirmed. Treat them as a separate segment: no cold volume, a re-check in seven days, and a second channel if they stay unknown.
Roughly one in 4 .gov addresses is dead, against about one in 7 across non-freemail lists.
Catch-all is the defining trait here: 18.0% of .gov addresses accept anything, so finder guesses look valid and bounce later. Hold them out of cold sequences entirely.
34.7% of .gov addresses confirmed as deliverable at verification time and can go straight to the primary sequence, with a re-check before every send.
Verify before every send and prefer named contacts; role addresses in government are often unmonitored.
Role addresses such as info@ and sales@ make up 1.7% of .gov addresses in the corpus. Role addresses rarely reach a person; prefer named contacts.
24.7% of 5,866 .gov addresses verified by BounceZero between April and October 2026 were confirmed invalid, against 14.5% across non-freemail domains and 17.6% across freemail.
22.1%. Unknown means the mailbox could not be confirmed either way, usually because the gateway deferred the probe. BounceZero refunds unknown results; re-check after a week or use a second channel.
Partly: 18.0% of .gov addresses sat behind a catch-all accept, so the server took any address and the mailbox could not be confirmed.
34.7% confirmed valid at verification time. Keep bounces under 2% and complaints under 0.3% on the send, and re-verify the segment before every send.
Upload the file and see valid, invalid, catch-all and unknown per row, with the .gov segment against this benchmark. 100 free checks a month, unknowns refunded.
Ayoub built BounceZero's 5-stage validation pipeline, its dedicated BGP-announced IP infrastructure, and the Patroni HA PostgreSQL cluster behind every verification. Previously built high-volume email delivery infrastructure. Trained at 1337 Benguerir (École 42 network, 2019). Open-source: bgp_analyzer.
Invalid, catch-all and unknown rates per email provider and country domain, 2026
119,582 .fr addresses verified April to October 2026
801,225 Gmail addresses verified April to October 2026
110,452 Hotmail Australia addresses verified April to October 2026
253,445 Hotmail (Outlook.com) addresses verified April to October 2026
34,790 Hotmail Netherlands addresses verified April to October 2026
50,895 iCloud Mail addresses verified April to October 2026
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