Google is beefing up its deal finder tools for consumers in its hotel and flight search products. This week, Google announced the official launch of new travel features in search — specifically aimed at giving searchers deeper insights into prices around their travel. We covered these features when they were being tested last month and now Google is officially launching them.
Google search will now tell you if the prices for traveling, be it for flights or hotels, is a good deal both in general and also for the time frame you are going — i.e. Thanksgiving. Here is a screen shot example showing the range of Thanksgiving pricing.
Google also lets searchers look at a map to “explore” good prices based on dates they want to travel. “If you’re flexible on your travel location or dates for an end-of-year getaway, you can search for destinations like ‘Southern Europe’,” then choose either specific or flexible dates.
The company says Google Flights searches thousands of possible destinations and analyzes historical flight prices. Cities with good deals get highlighted with green “Great value” tags.
Google also launched hotel price insights, the ones we covered last month. Google described it as “Price Insights for Hotels, which lets you see how prices evolve over time for the dates of your trip.” Here is what that looks like:
Google also has begun to roll out the local tab feature showing searchers what they can do while they are at a specific hotel.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land’s News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.