Earlier this month, Google announced a few changes that they hope will bring increased relevancy to google search results in their quest for the perfect search engine:

Larry Page once described the perfect search engine as understanding exactly what you mean and giving you back exactly what you want

One of the upshots of this is the integration of Gmail with search engine results.  So, if you’re logged in to google and you carry out a search, google will also search your email for relevant results.  What this means is that if you have received promotional email (that is now in your gmail inbox) these emails will be searched for when you use google.

Let’s say I’m searching for ‘surfing holidays in Devon’ (sounds nice, right?) … and I received an email – possibly months ago – from a company offering surfing holidays, then that email might well show up in my search results.

What this means to marketers is that the emails they deliver have just been given a second chance at life.  The longer your email survives in a person’s inbox, the more likely it is to be returned by searching from the recipient.

This makes it incredibly important that a) company’s carry out regular email marketing campaigns, and that b) the content of those emails gets as much attention as they give the content on their website.

Overall, I think this is a positive thing – although I reckon some people will be alarmed at what might be perceived as ‘snooping’ through the inbox.