Why is gmail search so so bad ?

Jan_de_Bakker

As the title says , why?

Google is amazing for searching the web, but for gmail I have lost emails and documents that I know exist and have found them eventually by manually
trawling through my inbox.

I asked a big data expert once and he gave me a really good answer - I can't quite remember now tho

I would have thought if they can search the web so efficiently , whats the problem with an inbox ? - the contents are a lot lot less complex.

begbysback

Do you know who emails are from, or words contained in the email?

me_irl

A good trick is "has:attachment" that will list all emails that have one (without quotes).

If you click on the faint down arrow at the end of the search box you'll get more advanced options too.

ED E

Google search deals with multiple users against 1 data set (the web). It can learn what users actually want.

Gmail search is 1 user for an unique data set. There's no aggregated learning there, only heuristics.

Jan_de_Bakker

ED E wrote: »

Google search deals with multiple users against 1 data set (the web). It can learn what users actually want.

Gmail search is 1 user for an unique data set. There's no aggregated learning there, only heuristics.

Sounds like what big Data guy told me

jenearl

Very frustrating isn't it... For what it's worth, I tend to turn off conversation view - that makes trawling through manually a lot easier. But like me_irl said, it helps if you're searching for one with an attachement so you can use that neat little trick!

MarkR

I find gmail to be faster to search, over inbox.