--- title: "How To Use SPF Lookup Counter For Determining The Number Of Lookup Counts | DuoCircle" description: "Join the thousands of organizations that use DuoCircle Find out how affordable it is for your organization today and be pleasantly surprised.Interested in" image: "https://www.duocircle.com/images/og-default.png" canonical: "https://www.duocircle.com/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/spf-lookup-counter/" --- Content # How To Use SPF Lookup Counter For Determining The Number Of Lookup Counts Join the thousands of organizations that use DuoCircle Find out how affordable it is for your organization today and be pleasantly surprised.Interested in [ Talk to an Expert → ](/contact/) [ See what we make ](/products/) ## How To Use SPF Lookup Counter For Determining The Number Of Lookup Counts _Every SPF implementation must limit the number of modifiers and mechanisms for doing SPF lookups to at most 10_. Users who do not follow this limit get [permerror SPF permanent error too many DNS lookups](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/permerror-spf-permanent-error-too-many-dns-lookups). To avoid the [SPF lookup failure](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/spf-lookup-failure), they can use techniques like [SPF flattening](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/spf-flattening), [multiple SPF records](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/multiple-spf-records), [SPF compression](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/spf-compression), etc., but it is best to know the number of counts to avoid the [SPF lookup limit](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/spf-lookup-limit). [Fix Your SPF Errors Now](/email/spf-record-check) ![spf lookup](https://media.mailhop.org/duocircle/images/2021/01/email-spf.png) ### SPF Lookup Counter: How To Determine The Number Of Counts? Let us take the example of **SPF records** that Google publishes for its customers. _The users must include the \_spf.google.com SPF record in their domain SPF records_. When you do an [SPF lookup](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups/spf-lookup) of the record in DNS, you will find: `v=spf1 include:_sampledomain.google.com include:_sampledomain2.google.com include:_sampledomain3.google.com ~all` Each of the included \_sampledomain SPF records contains a list of IP addresses and doesn’t require additional domain lookups. Now suppose a domain only includes the record recommended by Google: `include:_spf.google.com ~all` It will have a lookup count of four – one each for previously mentioned records and one for \_spf.google.com lookup. Now suppose you wish to add the [SPF records provided](https://www.mailgun.com/blog/spf-records-basics/) by other mail service providers. The **SPF lookup counter** can be calculated in the manner we discussed with the \_spf.google.com. The total count will be the sum of individual contributions. For example, if mailprovider.com contains three additional domains in its records, then the following record will have a total [domain lookup](https://www.autospf.com/) count of 8. `v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:mailprovider.com ~all` While there are other methods to avoid the typical [SPF too many DNS lookups](/content/spf-too-many-dns-lookups) errors, it is safe to use the SPF lookup counter to determine the number of counts in advance. It’s better to be safe than sorry! ##### Join the thousands of organizations that use DuoCircle --- Find out how affordable it is for your organization today and be pleasantly surprised. [Auto SPF - Sign Up FREE](/email/spf-record-check)Interested in our Partner Program for MSPs and VARs? Visit Our [MSP Partner Program](/msp-partner-program). ## Ready to talk? Same-day response from someone technical. We tell you yes or no quickly. If yes, we get to work. [Talk to an Expert→](/contact/)[See what we make](/products/) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Organization","name":"DuoCircle LLC","url":"https://www.duocircle.com","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://www.duocircle.com/images/duocircle-logo.png"},"description":"DuoCircle is a portfolio of specialized email products covering protection, authentication, delivery, and routing. We deliver about 90% of category-leader capability at roughly half the price, backed by experts who own the outcome. 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