Does Google take email server IP blacklists into account?

[OptiBacUK]

This is just a hypothetical, but would Google use information from email server blacklists to determine the quality of a website?

The reason is that we're planning to code in an e-mail queuing system for our next CMS, and we would put SPF and DKIM in place. We wouldn't be sending any bulk e-mails (we use Constant Contact for this), but we might be sending personalised follow up e-mails, unpaid order emails and that sort of thing.

There's no reason to think we'll be blacklisted, but from experience I know that these email blacklist directories quite often give false positives when an e-mail server is incorrectly configured. So the risk is that we might get blacklisted by mistake when we start using this new feature.

Would Google take this into account as part of the algorithm?

And if so, would the damage be permanent? (I.e. does getting removed from the blacklist mean Google will stop thinking we're a low quality / spammy site)

[KevinBudzynski]

I have never read any evidence that would support a blacklisted mail server to influence rankings. Many websites also share an ip address, and to penalize one would penalize all. However, banning sites based on a shared ip address does occur. So in short, I would say you shouldn't do it to be safe.

Good read: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/the-penguin-update-how-google-identifies-spam