Inbox By Gmail Gets Smarter Search With Quick Answer Cards

Inbox by Gmail, Google’s next-gen email client for mobile and the web, is getting a nice little update today that will make it easier to find information like addresses, membership numbers and package tracking numbers in your emails.

08_Top_resultsWhile Inbox always featured a pretty good search feature that would organize results by relevance, Google has now made its search tool in the app significantly smarter.

Just like in Google Search, Inbox will now often pop up a small card with a quick answer instead of just a list of emails.

Say you want to find your United frequent flier number because you’re not actually all that much of a frequent flier and don’t have it memorized. Until now, Inbox would pop up a list of emails that would have those keywords in them. Now, it looks at your emails and tries to find that number so it can display it in a quick answer box. Or if you’re looking for your hotel reservation in San Francisco for the Crunchies, you can now search for “sf hotel” and it’ll likely find it and show the result in a card.

Google tells me that all of this is essentially powered by the same technology the Inbox team also uses to build its trip bundles.

The company says Inbox will pop up quick answer cards for queries about addresses, phone numbers, membership numbers, flights, events, bills, package tracking “and more.”