Google’s New Flight Search Service: Test Drive

Google's new Flight of steps Search feature helps users find great deals on airfares quickly and easily. But how well does it work?

It's been an open secret that Google has had a flight of stairs-search have in the works always since the Web goliath purchased ITA Computer software for its flight-information software finish year. Now Google will compete with established sites such as Hipmunk and Kayak.

I took Google Flight Search for a spin, and found a site that looks great but needs a little more work before it can rival specialized flight of steps-search sites.

Well-favored Site

Google Flight Search's sterling strength is its looks. Every bit usual, Google has understandably put much of time and effort into the visualizations for the site, and the work pays off. When you available Google Flight Lookup, you see a map out of the United States with your divergence position set by default option to your latest city (Flying Search seems to be made for domestic flights only at the bit). You can either choose your name and address from a drop-down menu or flick along destinations conveniently labeled with the City name and the cheapest round-trip airfare Google keister find to get you thither and spine once more.

Kayak offers a similar map. However, whereas Kayak stuffs its map with all possible destination, Google keeps things simple, opting for major airports and believable destinations. In point of fact, Flight Lookup seems to take simmpleness as its watchword.

The default list of flights that appears when you start a search gets right to the point. It lists airline, price, and takeoff and landing place times in a single row for a clearer and more clayey view of flights than you'd happen on sites the like Expedia. And the chart take i that Google provides fifty-fifty gives Hipmunk–a internet site known for its great blueprint–a run for its money.

Not Enough Data?

Straight-grained though Google Flight Search looks bang-up, its prima drawback at the moment is that it has little data than its competitors do. When I searched for flights from San Francisco to New York on Google, Hipmunk, and Kayak, Google missed a fewer flights that its competitors found, and it lacked pricing data for entire airlines such as Vestal America.

This may be the first time I've had to criticize Google because IT didn't throw enough data. At the moment, though Google has created some extraordinary visualizations for Flight Look, the incomplete flight database will make IT hard for the company to compete. Users want the best airfare value they can find–non the prettiest internet site.

Flying Search just opened to the state-supported Tuesday, and flatbottomed the developers admitted in the blog post announcing the new boast that they still have function to do. Indeed Flight of steps Search might have more-complete results in the future. For at present, however, if you privation to make convinced that you get the best deal, you should probably stick to Kayak.