Google Rolling Out AI-Powered ‘Most Relevant’ Search Results Feature for Gmail

Google began rolling out a new improvement for Gmail on Thursday that will help users find relevant emails easier than before. Dubbed ‘Most Relevant', this new search result sorting feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) to bring those emails that might be more important than others to the top, ditching the traditional chronological order. This new feature will be available alongside the existing options for filters that let users fine-tune the search results. Notably, Gmail recently received a new Gemini feature that can automatically create calendar events based on information in emails.

Gmail Will Now Show “Most Relevant” Search Results

In a blog post, the Mountain View-based tech giant announced the rolling out of the new feature. This will be available to all personal Gmail account users on the web as well as on the Android and iOS apps. The company plans to release the feature to Business accounts in the future.

Google says the tool is aimed at making searching for a particular email easier, especially in an overflowing inbox. So far, searching for emails requires users to type keywords related to the email, and the mail client returns results based on chronological order or with a top result followed by others.

The Most Relevant search result feature in Gmail
Photo Credit: Google

Now, after searching with keywords, users will see a new dropdown menu on the search results page. It can be set to either ‘Most Recent' or ‘Most Relevant'. Most recent will continue to show chronological results, but if users select the latter option, AI will take over to show results a bit differently.

As per the company, this new mode considers factors such as recency, most-clicked emails and frequent contacts. This means those emails and senders a user has interacted with more will show up higher than those that they've not. Google claims that this mode is likelier to show the emails the user is looking for at the top of the search results, saving the time and hassle of scrolling through hundreds of items.

Notably, while the feature is powered by AI, it does not use generative AI models like the Gemini-based features in Gmail. This is more of a machine learning-powered ranking system that uses a mix of AI-driven search algorithms, NLP models, and behaviour analysis techniques to surface relevant emails.