Gmail users can now easily find and read important e-mails first before the not-so-important ones filling up their inbox with the introduction of a new feature that automatically highlights priority messages.

The optional Gmail function called "priority inbox" filters e-mails and moves those that users want to read to the top of the inbox.

"We want to help people get through their mailboxes much more quickly and spend more time on what's really important to them," Cnn.com quoted Keith Coleman, Gmail's product director, as saying on Tuesday.

The "priority inbox" identifies important e-mails based on the number of times a user has opened and replied to past e-mails. Users can also tag high priority e-mails with a "+" sign and low priority e-mails with a minus symbol.

Google Inc. tested the efficiency of the "priority inbox" on its more than 10,000 employees and the result was a 13 percent drop on the time spent in Gmail.

For users who don't need the feature, they can shut it off and the old inbox opens.

The new feature comes less than a week after Google introduced free U.S. and Canada calls via Gmail.