Do you actually want your Gmail emails in the Search Results?

[morestar]

Do you? There's an experiment Google's running where they're testing showing email in the search results. I'm not sure if I see the value in this but I do know it would be nice if we could Plus (+) content within our email.

Anyways, sign up if you're interested...

[antihero13]

If anyone else on the web can see my gmail emails as part of their search results that's a terrible idea. It'd be an invasion of privacy. What's written in my emails is between the people I send those messages to and me, and vice versa when people send me things.

However, if only I can see my Gmail emails in part of my search results while I'm signed into my Google account then I upgrade it to just a waste of time. If I thought there was something in my email that could help me I would have searched through it already. Gmail already gives you an option to search through your email both by sender and by keyword, and you can do a regular Google search while in Gmail too. So really Google already does this, but just in reverse.

No matter what, those of us who work hard at SEO can't be too happy about this. You might think you're doing all you can to get to the top of Google search results, but emails can end up taking the top spot or much of the first page when a user does a search. Worse yet, you have no way of knowing where your site will land SEO-wise because there's no way of you knowing what's in people's Gmail accounts, or how much.

[morestar]

Well all I can say is that they've must have done some testing to see whether this could be useful. I know I've rarely used the search function within email (twice or 3 times) but maybe they're onto something?

Here's Danny Sullivan's up and close look at Gmail in the search results. Maybe Google has a fighting chance at taking a large chunk of the market share from Facebook - maybe that's not even their concern.

For me, I'd like to see, once a message is sent, at the top of the screen where it says "message sent", another link that says "allow sharing" or something to that effect once you've sent a message. That gives the recipients the chance to share your email on their networks.

Either way, till then...

[mjtaylor]

You always bring us the latest news, Dave! Well done, again!

[SinghVineet]

Since, Google owns Gmail they have all the mails data in their record. So, it is not going to be new for them. They just have to add this feature in their search algo. If this feature is visible to me only then its ok but if it is going to be shared with my Google Friends and others associated with my Google Account then this is not acceptable. From normal user point of view I don't want my email to be listed in Search Results if it is available to others who are logged in to Google account.

[DaveSawers]

Searching e-mails will only search those in your own private Gmail inbox, sent and other folders. You will not have access to anyone else's e-mails, nor will they have access to yours.

Whether that is useful or not depends in part how you manage your e-mail. If you always delete older e-mails and keep your folder contents light then it is unlikely to be much use. If you keep everything, it may have some utility.

If you use several e-mail addresses, then it would be more useful to include all of them in this search and not just Gmail. Whether you want to give Google access to all your private correspondence or not is another issue altogether.

[dharrison]

I must admit, the amount of time I have to use search on my emails, this would actually save me a lot of bother. Unfortunately, although I have a GMail account, I don't use it.

And so long as I am the only one who sees it.

[kencook]

I am not a fan of personalized search results at this point. I know Amit, Matt and the engineering team are working diligently to prove this can be accomplished however in the mean time many great search results opportunities are being missed by search personalization metrics in the current Panda algorithm. How many times have you had a client who says, "My page is coming up number 3 for my keywords so how can you say it is number 1?" You know it's because they have been clicking on their competitor's sites and Google decided they must be looking for that page and not their own. I'm sure the answer is coming but it's not completely here yet.

[sonalichauhan993]

Since, Google owns Gmail they have all the mails data in their record. So, it is not going to be new for them. They just have to add this feature in their search algo. If this feature is visible to me only then its ok but if it is going to be shared with my Google Friends and others associated with my Google Account then this is not acceptable. From normal user point of view I don't want my email to be listed in Search Results if it is available to others who are logged in to Google account.

[DaveSawers]

I don't want my email to be listed in Search Results if it is available to others who are logged in to Google account.

Why would you allow others to login to your Google account?