Gmail labs is often working to get something new for you or tweak the old one for better use. This time again they have done a tweak on labels which might help you reduce the clutter.
You can do only make show up those labels which have the unread messages rather than a full list. To know how you can do this just go to gmail blog, and just do this stuff.
On the search engine stuff, Google team has done a good job by introducing the search snippets. This can help you getting the relevant content easier and faster. Just check it out!
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