For a company with search expertise, Google really could have really done a better job with Gmail’s search feature. At the moment, if you type something in the search bar in the Gmail Android app, it shows a few top results and the rest of the results appear in chronological order.
That’s not the best way to go about a search, especially if your inbox has numerous emails with a particular word. In October, it was reported that Gmail was working on a new feature to help you narrow down your research by choosing one of two filters – “Most relevant” or “Most recent.”
The feature is now being deployed, according to a new report from Android Police. Currently, Gmail offers you a range of filters to refine your search, including whether there are labels, emails sent by a specific person, emails sent to a specific person, and whether there are any attachments.
Gmail on Android will now let you sort emails by relevancy or recency. | Image Credit – Artem Russakovskii, X
So, even though there are a range of operators to help you narrow down your search, sometimes they fall short. Other times, you may simply not have the time to fill in the values/terms for each operator field.
The “Top results” that previously appeared were decided by Google’s machine learning models based on the search terms, most recent emails, and other relevant factors. The idea was to display the results Google deemed the most relevant at the top.
Google has realized that it may not always get things right, which is seemingly why it’s letting you decide whether you want emails to be displayed in order of relevance or by date.
The feature is now live for some users and it will eventually be rolled out to everyone.