Gmail gets supercharged with AI-powered search

Let’s be honest, we’ve all been there. You know that email you need is in your Gmail inbox somewhere: you just can’t find it. You search for keywords, email addresses, and subject bylines, but nothing works to actually find the message you really need.

Thankfully, Google is addressing the sometimes-terrible search in Gmail. They’re rolling out a significant upgrade that is powered by the expanding and helpful AI we’ve come to expect from Google services. Instead of the old, often frustrating chronological order based purely on keywords, Gmail is now taking a much smarter approach. The new search results consider a whole bunch of factors to surface what’s actually important to you, like:

• Recency: Timelines are clearly important, and it’s highly likely that the email from your boss last week is probably more relevant than a newsletter from 2018.
• Most-Clicked Emails: Gmail is learning from your behavior. If you frequently open a specific email thread, it’s a good bet you’ll want to see it again.
• Frequent Contacts: Emails from people you communicate with regularly are prioritized. This makes very clear sense.

The result? The emails you’re actually looking for are far more likely to be sitting right at the top of your search results without the endless scrolling and digging through pages of irrelevant messages. And if this means Gmail can quickly surface the info you need right when you need it, this could be a massive time-saver for anyone who lives in their inbox.

Google is calling this “most relevant” search results, and it’s rolling out globally for personal Google accounts. You can access it on the web and in the official Gmail app for Android and iOS. Don’t worry, you’re not stuck with it – you can toggle back to “most recent” results if you prefer the old-school way. But if this actually works as advertised, why would you? You should have it soon, so I guess we’ll see, right?