How to Use Google Flights Like a Pro! (STOP OVERPAYING)

Google Flights is a very powerful tool and when used correctly could save you thousands of dollars. But the problem is most people do not use Google Flights correctly. Booking flights can feel like gambling, prices are changing daily, and it's hard to know if you're getting ripped off. But what if I told you Google Flights has powerful tools that most people have never used? In this video, I'm going to show you seven tools within Google Flights that will get you cheaper fares, book better dates, and avoid overpaying. We will start with the easy tools that can save you money with basically no extra work, you just need to know where to look. Finishing this video with more pro-level tools that might take a few extra minutes of your time but will be well worth it. The last one has saved us hundreds of dollars quite a few times. Let's get started. Tool number one, price tracking and alerts. Google Flights has this awesome feature that allows you to track prices by getting email alerts for when a price drops on a specific flight that you are looking at. This is a super easy tool to use and the reason it's really nice is because oftentimes prices on flights are changing hour by hour, day by day, and you don't want to have to be glued to Google Flights all the time. So let me show you how to set up these alerts. Obviously you'll start by going to Google Flights, I spelled that wrong, then you're going to plug in your trip that you plan to make. Let's do JFK to LAX, two big airports, and let's say we want to take a trip over 4th of July weekend, so Thursday, July 3rd, to a Monday, July 7th. And you're going to click search. From here, Google is going to, at the very top, give you some of the best flights available for this specific trip. Now right underneath that, you're going to see a icon that has like kind of like almost like a graph that says track prices. From there, you're going to see a toggle right next to that and all you're going to do is you're going to toggle that on and you're going to get a notification that says you will get emails when prices change for that specific trip. It's that simple. That way all you have to do is look at your email for when a price drops and maybe that will entice you to book your flight. Really easy tool to use. Tool number two, date grid. This is a personal favorite of mine, especially if you're somebody that has a little bit of flexibility to adjust your travel days by one or two days. So let me show you how to use this tool. Now looking at our same flight here from New York to Los Angeles, you can see what we were looking at for before with our track prices and then if you move your eyes all the way to the right side of the screen, you're going to see something that says price graph and then date grid. Go ahead and click on that date grid. You're going to initially see a bunch of numbers and dates pop up, but let me explain what we're looking at here. So starting on the top here, you have your departure days. On the side here, you have your return days. The number highlighted in blue, that is the flight that we currently have plugged in. So you can see here Thursday, July 3rd is when we will depart and Monday, July 7th is when we will return with the highlighted blue number being our current price, $330. Now on this graph, green is good. You want to look for green prices because that means the price is low compared to maybe what they normally are. With the highlighted green box being the cheapest flight. So as you can see here on Wednesday, July 2nd departing and Tuesday, July 8th returning, you can see a highlighted green price with a little star in the corner of $228. So by adjusting your travel day by just one day earlier and coming back one day later, and now I know that makes your trip longer, but you're saving over a hundred dollars. So if you're somebody that has some flexibility to maybe change up your travel days a bit, this can be a great tool. It might only save you $50, but it could save you, like in this case, over a hundred dollars, which is really nice. Did you know that you can plug in multiple airports? Tool number three is not really a tool, but more so a feature that people don't even realize is available. Now, where this might be advantageous for you is say you live in New York city, like we've been talking about. And obviously New York has a multiple different airports and you might want to see flights from different airports to see what the best price is. And you can do that right in the search bar. So to do that, you're going to start by just plugging in, say, maybe the closest airport to you, which is say, for example, JFK, but also you're within driving distance to Newark. How can I add that in as well? You're going to click on the search bar again, and then on the far right side, you're going to see a plus sign. Go ahead and click on that plus sign, and then you can add in another airport. So you can plug in Newark, and now you're going to get search results from both airports to help you determine the best price. This is especially nice if you're somebody that lives in a city with a multiple airports, or maybe even you live in a smaller town and you're trying to do what we call a repositioning flight, where you're going to fly to a bigger city to then get somewhere else. You're going to want to know which big city is going to offer the best flight prices. So that way you can plug in different airports or multiple different airports to see if you're getting the best price. Now we're starting to get into the nitty gritty a little bit with tool number four, which is called the Explore tab. This is a particularly nice tool if you are somebody that wants to take a trip, not exactly sure where, but you want to get a good flight deal. So let me show you how to use this tool. You start by just going to your normal search bar. Your home airport is New York JFK. Now you can see here I left a where to, as well as my departure and return days. And all I'm going to do is click the search bar that says Explore. And that is going to pull up a map with a bunch of different prices. That way you can get a broad picture of potentially where you want to travel to. Sometimes letting the flight deal decide your destination is a fun and affordable way to travel. So you can see here my home airport is highlighted in pink. And then you're going to see various flight prices going to a bunch of different destinations across the U.S. Now you can change this to go over and look at Europe. So you can see from JFK to Europe and you can see all those flight prices. You can go over to Asia. This is a really great tool to help you not only explore destinations, but also help you find the best flight prices. Hey, drop a comment below if you have any special tips or tricks that you use on Google Flights to save you money. Also, if there's any other resources that you use to book cheap flights, I would love to hear from you. I'm always looking to learn new tips and tricks, not only to share with you guys, but to also try out for myself. So leave a comment below. Now diving into our Explore tab even further is going to bring us to tool number five, which is the flexible date search. So again, maybe you don't exactly know where you want to go, but you have a timeframe in mind, not specific days, but a timeframe. So you can see our map here. And then you can also see over on the left side, you're going to have our destination, our where to is obviously blank. And then underneath it, you're going to see like a calendar icon. You can go ahead and click on that. And this bar is going to allow you to search specific times a year or specific lengths of trips. So say you're somebody that doesn't know where you want to go, but you know, you have some PTO available in October. So I want to travel in October. I'm going to go ahead, click on October, and you only have about two days that you can get off. So maybe you just want to take a long weekend somewhere. I'm going to go ahead and click weekend and then click done. And that is going to update your search to flights in October that are over weekends. This is again, a great way. If you're unsure where to go, you can let the price of your flight dictate your destination by allowing you to still be somewhat precise with what time of year you want to travel in. Tool number six, filters. We're going to stay right here in our explore tab, and we're going to draw our attention again over to the left side of the screen. We saw our flexible date search, and then right underneath, you're going to see something that says all filters. You're going to go ahead and click on that. And this is going to allow you to search for flights or narrow your flight search by things like nonstop flights or one stop or fewer or price specifications. So say you don't want to spend over a certain amount, you can specify that. Maybe you only like flying a certain airline or alliance. You can specify that. Maybe you don't want to fly further than six hours. You can specify that. But my personal favorite is at very bottom where it says bags. This is going to allow you to add in baggage that you plan to bring with you, specifically carry on baggage. Why this is really nice and why I've been using it a lot more recently is as we know, baggage costs are rising and fast. I feel like baggage is so expensive these days, and sometimes it can be deceiving with the budget airlines because they don't include the carry on baggage fee, but the ticket prices are so low. And I feel like sometimes I've been kind of robbed where I booked the budget airline because the ticket prices are so low. And then I get to the airport and to learn that it doesn't include a carry on bag and they charge like 70 bucks just for a carry on. And the price is almost equal to that or sometimes even more of your normal carrier. So this feature is really helping with that on Google flights. All you need to do is you need to say, for example, add in a carry on bag and it is going to adjust the prices to show you the airlines that include a carry on bag and adjust the prices for those that don't include a carry on bag. So that way you can better compare the flight prices and you avoid any surprises at the airport, especially these days with the increasing baggage fees. Tool number seven, the one way flight hack. This is less of a tool and more so just a feature that I feel like people don't use enough. And that is booking two separate one way tickets versus a round trip ticket. We have saved hundreds of dollars booking like this, though it's not always advantageous, which I'll explain in a second. But how you do this is at the top of your search bar, you're just going to see a round trip one way or multi city option, and you're just going to click on one way. And pretty much the easiest way to do this is to, first of all, do the flight round trip, see what the price is, and then you're going to do two separate flights, one from wherever you're flying from to wherever you're going, and then reverse the order and then add those prices together. You will oftentimes see a fifty hundred dollar difference, especially we have found on longer international flights. We've also found it widens your search just a bit, being that you can book with different airlines. Now, I wouldn't say this really makes much sense if you're only saving ten, twenty dollars, being that it adds some complexities as far as booking, as well as if you need to cancel or change your flight, it makes it a lot more difficult. So this is definitely more of a pro level hack, but it's something that you might want to try out on your next flight search. You never know when you might be able to save a couple hundred dollars by just booking two separate flights. So give it a try on your next flight to see if there's any difference. So there it is. Seven tools that will help you use Google Flights to book smarter and save you money. Now, if you're somebody that wants to do zero work, meaning no work at all, there's plenty of tools out there that can do a lot of the grunt work for you. One that Meg and I use often is called Daily Drop Pro, which if you're interested, I would highly recommend checking out to find really cheap flights as well as even some mistake fares. But anyways, Google Flights is a great and super powerful tool that comes at no cost, is completely free and is a great place to start finding and booking your next flight. If you enjoyed this video and found it valuable, please, please, please give it a thumbs up, as well as subscribe to our channel for more content like this. We will see you in the next video.