If you belong to FaceBook, Twitter, and other social networks or mailing lists, you probably get a lot of email notifications (“Bacn“, email you want but not right now). These emails probably end up in your inbox, distracting you from more important matters.
You can use filters or rules in most desktop applications to move those emails to a different folder, but if you read your email on a mobile device or on the web, all of those emails will be in your inbox. Gmail’s filters are a much better solution. Any filters you set up on the web will run automatically on all received email, before it even reaches your inbox, so your email will remain organized wherever you read it.
Setting up filters is easy. Gmail will let you create a filter matching the email you’re currently reading or emails you have selected in the list using “Filter messages like these”.
Gmail will show you the rules that will match the selected email. You can fine tune the rules, like having it match all addresses in that domain or a specific subject line.
Finally, choose the actions for that filter. Most likely you’ll have it skip the inbox and apply a label.
Don’t be afraid to set up lots of filters. Your ultimate goal is to keep everything out of your inbox except email that you’re actually interested in.