Gmail's Priority Inbox feature sorts the wheat from the chaff

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 31 2010, 13:06

Google has this week launched its new Priority Inbox feature, which has been designed by the online search giant to help its Gmail users maximise their time while also significantly cutting down on annoying inbox clutter.

Set to work alongside Gmail's existing Spam filter, Priority Inbox functions by learning from user activity within Gmail and then actively applying that knowledge in order to weed out 'important' mail from 'everything else' allowed through the Spam filter.

“In addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn't outright junk but isn't very important,” outlined Google in an official blog post. “So we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff.”

In an effort to assist the feature's efficiency and rate of success, Gmail users will also be able to help Priority Inbox evolve by labelling specific messages as either 'important' or 'not important' whenever priority-based mistakes are made.

“In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules,” commented Google software engineer Doug Aberdeen.

“As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important,” he added. “Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email the most, and which messages you open and reply to. And, as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you.”

Gmail's new Priority Inbox has already undergone internal testing at Google and is now expected to be rolled out to all Gmail users over the next week or so. According to Google, sustained use of Priority Inbox could help users cut down inbox time by around 46 minutes.

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