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Google Flight Search gaining visibility

December 05, 2011 | Online Travel

A new upgrade to Google Flight Search takes up a lot of prime real estate on the Google search results page and will inevitably renew calls of “foul” amidst allegations that Google is using its market power to favor its own products versus those of competitors.

Until now, you could access the airline-only Google flight metasearch tool by clicking a Flights link on the left side of search results pages or by entering Google.com/flights, but Google says the tool will now also be embedded into classic search results pages.

Google Flight Search detects your location and appears as the top organic result in this example, showing fares from Virgin America, United, Continental and an “unknown price” from perennial metasearch holdout Southwest. You can adjust the dates right there on the Google search results page to finetune your search, compare fares and then navigate to the airline website, metasearch-style.

Google Flight Search takes up a lot of prime real estate on the Google search results page and will inevitably renew calls of “foul” amidst allegations that Google is using its market power to favor its own products versus those of competitors like Kayak or online travel agencies such as Expedia, Priceline, Travelocity, and Orbitz.

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