Google Flights is now offering a new, unique feature: You can opt to get notifications whenever prices on a specific route are extraordinarily low. Until recently, this was a service only offered for a specific set of dates.
In contrast to its regular monitoring feature, you will only be notified if a price shows up that is far below the prices in Google’s database for that route. When you select specific travel dates, as usual, you will receive a message every time prices rise or fall.
You can test the new feature for fares like economy class tickets from London to New York, among other routes.
Our Observations
Our research indicates that, as of now, the option is limited to selected routes and only available for economy class tickets for a single passenger. Potential filters for specific airlines or alliances will be ignored, too. If you search with one or more of these conditions activated, the Any dates switch will simply not appear.
Google probably won’t check all possible prices for any possible journey in its databases, but takes advantage of already existing, personalized tracking or search requests. This data already allows Google to display a price index for often requested routes. We suppose that’s why Google offers this feature for routes that have high demand – they are already searched and monitored more frequently than others and therefore allow for a broader database.
At the time of writing, we haven’t yet received a notification about a low price. We are eagerly awaiting it and are excited to see how it will work and look. Will it be a specific date with a mind-blowing fare? Or a disappointing message, suggesting trips for extremely long or short stays?
Have you already fooled around with Google Flights’ shiny new feature? Feel free to tell us about it in the comments. We are just as excited about your experiences as we are about ours.