Time is of the essence, especially for small- or medium-sized businesses. To keep up with your competitors, spending most of your day rummaging through your inbox won’t help. Use these Gmail tips and tricks and spend less time in front of the monitor and more time enhancing your bottom line.

Although hackers continue to develop new viruses and bug exploits, the most effective weapon in their arsenal is a simple email. All a would-be cybercriminal has to do is write a convincing message (or pretend to be a trustworthy entity) to persuade a victim to download a malware-ridden file or surrender their personal information.

Phishing scams, whereby cybercriminals masquerade as trustworthy entities to fool victims into disclosing private information, have had a recent surge in popularity. This is largely because hackers realize the best way to infiltrate a system is by exploiting people’s trust.

With as much as we write about sophisticated malware and security breaches, sometimes the most effective attacks are the ones that prey on human error. In the most recent case, all it took was an email with a perfect imitation of one of Google’s security screens.

It’s undeniable that we hide skeletons in our closets, your search engine history included. Users might not know this, but Google keeps a full record on EVERY search you have ever made, removed searches as well. If you thought you deleted all your secret searches, think again.

Looking for an important file or message among endless emails in your inbox is no fun, especially if you need it right before a meeting starts. You’ve tried using the basic search box at the top of Gmail and found out that it didn’t help either. Don’t worry, we’ve rounded up 6 search operators that will help you sort through your inbox to get what you need in a jiffy.

There are a lot of web-based email platforms in the marketplace. Many come and go, but there’s a reason Gmail has crossed the 1 billion monthly active user milestone and is still standing strong as one of the world’s most popular web-based email clients.