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Gmail Search Suggestions

Keith Chan [PersonRank 10]

Friday, July 4, 2008
15 years ago4,792 views

Comparing to the Google.com search, I feel there is a lot missing in Gmail's built in search engine. Here are some of my suggested improvements:

1. Typo correction/suggestion;

2. Search within attachments and attachment names;

3. Sorting. According to reversed chronological order and *relevance*. I still don't understand why there cannot be a EmailRank in Gmail. Where you rank emails with reference to the date sent, contact, number of recipients, user behavior, etc.;

4. Import the keywords I type in the search bar into the fields in the Advance Search fields. E.g. if I typed "from:Philipp" in the search bar, and click on the "Show search options" link, the word "Philipp" would be automatically imported to the "From:" field in the form;

5. OneBox that integrates Contacts and email search;

6. A timeline view like Google News Archive Search to "zoom" into certain time intervals.

What if your thought on Gmail's search?

Ben Allen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I don't think that there should be a typo correction/suggestion. In instant messaging, people misspell words all the time. It could be easy reference?

I would love sorting features, though.

reis [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

It'd be nice to be able to edit the subject line of a received email.

Keith Chan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Ben, I think you misunderstood me. I meant typo correction/suggestion for the search results which includes not only chat history but normal email conversations. Even better, Gmail could make its algorithm to understand that tgt means together.

dpneal [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I think these are some great ideas Keith

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Excellent ideas. Did you know that Yahoo Mail searches inside attachments and has options to refine the results?

http://ycoolthing.com/uploads/2006/12/refineresults.jpg

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I would also like for Gmail search to allow partial queries, at least if there's no other results. For instance, if I enter "friendf" I would like to find messages containing the word "friendfeed".

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Philipp:
Yahoo Mail does that, but I don't think it's a good idea. You get a lot of irrelevant results for some queries. Gmail needs the power behind Google search for spell check, synonyms, but applied to the context of your messages.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> You get a lot of irrelevant results for some queries.

They don't need to always do it – just sometimes. For instance, if a full-word search finds something then they could disable the word-part search. They could also apply stop words and so on. In my example, I don't believe "friendf" would result in that many bad hits, and returning nothing for that query is also not ideal. As a last resort if all that won't work for some reason, they could offer it as advanced search feature.

Keith Chan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Actually, I think Google Desktop isn't that great in search as well.

TonyB [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I would love the ability to sort by sender. I know I can search on sender, but I find it so much easier to clean out old email by sorting by sender.

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