You’re Using Google Flights WRONG! (Google Flights Tutorial 2026)

Most people are still using Google Flights the old way. Google Flights just got way easier to find deals if you know what tools to use and where to look. These new Google Flights features will have you finding deals like a pro. Now, normally you would have to pay lots of money for software giving you these types of deals, but with knowing how to use Google Flights, you will find these deals for free. In this video, I'll be showing you all the tips and tricks to save hundreds of dollars, including a recent update to Google Flights that could not only save you hundreds of dollars, but also get you to your destination way faster. A nice update from Google Flights that I didn't even know I needed. A quick note before we dive in. If this is your first time using Google Flights or you're a bit newer to this tool, I would also recommend watching the two other videos I made about Google Flights. In those videos, I go over more the basics of this powerful tool and we'll go at a slower pace and give you a lot more detail. This video is more about Google's recent updates. Let's get into it. We're gonna start with what is probably the biggest update and that is AI powered flight deals. So let's go into Google Flights here and let me show you where to find this and how to use it. So let's go to Google Flights. So when you pull up Google Flights, you're gonna see a normal stuff. You have your search bar, but then right underneath your search bar, you're gonna see this blue highlighted box. And this is going to be where Google has integrated AI. So on the right side, you're gonna click on explore deals. And this is going to bring you to an entirely new user interface. So let me talk you through what we're looking at here. So at the top, you're gonna see flight deals. Right underneath that, you're gonna see from Minneapolis. In my case, it says Minneapolis, but this is going to be your home airport. And you can plug in any airport here. So whether it's your home airport or really just any airport that you wanna get deals for, this is going to be where you plug it in. And like I said, you can plug in any airport here. Underneath that, you're gonna see a search bar. We're gonna come back to this in a second. Underneath the search bar, you have your filters. These are very standard and normal for any search of a flight. This should be pretty familiar. Then the next part is going to be what I'm calling the explore deals page, which is where Google is going to curate a bunch of deals, flight deals, based on your home airport or the airport that you plugged in. So you can see here, I have 30 deals from Minneapolis for a week-long trip in the next six months. And we can go ahead and change that in a second here, and I'll show you how to do that. But Google is going to curate a bunch of deals based on your home airport. So you can see here, we have Asheville for 54%, less than usual, normally $279. You can get it for 128. We have Faroe Islands, we have Nantucket. We have international and domestic destinations curated here for you. This is great for if you don't know where to go and you're looking for a good flight deal. To me, what's so exciting about this is this type of flight deal curation service normally costs you money. But now, Google Flights is providing this service to you for free. Let's say, though, we want to change this a little bit. What's really great about the AI technology in Google Flights now is that this is a completely customizable experience. So in this search bar, you can pretty much plug in whatever you want. So maybe it's, I want a one-week trip to a beach destination. One-week trip to a beach destination. Let's see what it pulls up. It's going to pull up any destination with a beach for one week. So you can see it pulled up 16 deals from Minneapolis. We have Bali, Indonesia. We have Phuket. We have Bora, Bora, Bora, Bora for 34% less than usual. We have Cancun, we have Miami. So this can be a really fun tool to play around with and just start to explore different flight deals. Now, after playing around with this and using it a bit, one thing I've learned that is the more general you are with your request, the more deals you're going to get. The more specific you are with your request, the less deals you're going to get. So if you just say two-week trip to, let's say, Europe, you should get a lot more deals, right? We have Budapest. We got quite a few deals here. You can see 69 deals from Minneapolis for a two-week trip to Europe. So that's a very general request. So I'm going to get a lot of deals. Now let's do something that's a little bit more specific. So let's say one-week trip to Florida on Delta Airlines. So a one-week trip to Florida on Delta Airlines. This is a very specific request, and you can see we only got 15 deals from it. So you can see in this top corner here, we have Key West for 46% less than usual. That's still a great deal. Find the Key West for $369. That's a good deal. But you're going to see a little less deals. But being that you can be super specific is also so cool. Like it only pulled Delta flights. So if you're somebody that likes a specific airline, or maybe you only like to fly out at a certain time, or maybe you have rewards points only for United or something like that, this AI software can now find you deals that fit all of those requests, which normally this would take hours to do. So I would highly encourage you to go on Google Flights and just start playing around with this. It's pretty fun, and you never know what deals you're going to find. I think Google here has a huge advantage compared to other AI platforms, being that they're seamless integration when it comes to finding the deal and then booking the deal. So say you want to actually go ahead and book one of these deals, it's really easy to just go ahead and click on, let's say this Key West deal, and boom, it brings you to the page that you're already familiar with. That integration is seamless, and I think is going to have a huge advantage over other AI platforms. That way, when you find a deal, you can go ahead and just book it right away super easily. Let me know down in the comments, are you somebody that pays for a flight deal service? If so, what do you think about these updates? And I'm curious if you think those deal services will be worth the investment with these Google Flights updates. Let me know down in the comments. Next, we have Advanced Price Insights. Basically, the information I'm about to tell you is going to give you the tools to understand if you're actually getting a good deal, and luckily, Google makes this super easy. So let me show you what I'm talking about. So let's plug in a different example here. Let's go New York, JFK to London, and let's go for a week in the summer, June 1st to June 8th. Quick search. What we're going to be looking at here is kind of this middle ground between top departing flights and other departing flights. In this area, you're going to see a lot of different features. We see our tracked prices that we've already talked about, but then you're going to see this blue highlighted box. Go ahead and click on that down arrow on the right-hand side of the screen there. This is going to give you a lot of information right here. This is going to be a price graph, and Google kind of has this sliding scale here where you can see on the far left side, excuse me, it's green, and then on the right side, it is red. So right now, you can see this flight is pretty typical at $681, and you can see, based on recent days, kind of in comparison what you're paying, but the thing I like the most here is going to be at the very top. It says the cheapest time to book is usually earlier, up to four months before your takeoff. Prices during this time for similar trips to London are $73 cheaper on average. So this little area here is going to also give you recommendations on when to book. Now, based on your flight path and or your flight where you're going, this recommendation is going to change. It might say, hey, wait 15 days to book because you're going to get a better deal. This is really cool because sometimes when it comes to flight deals, timing is so much of it. It is, you almost have to get lucky a little bit, but Google has so much data, and this tool right here is going to give you some insight on when the best time is to book. So I would highly recommend using that information. Now, in addition, we have some old features that I want to touch base on because they are really powerful, and that is date grid and price graph. So underneath that blue highlighted area, you're going to see date grid and price graph. Let's go into date grid. This feature is going to allow you to adjust your trip by a few days on either end to save a little bit of money. What you're looking for in the date grid here really is the green numbers. So anything that's in green and particularly in green with a little star in the corner, that's going to be your best flight deal. Now, obviously it doesn't make sense in a lot of cases. Like this one here, it's a one day trip. That doesn't make sense, but oftentimes I've saved a couple hundred dollars by just adjusting my trip a day forward or a day back. So this is a really powerful tool. And then next we have our price graph. This again is very similar to what we already saw, but you can really compare against months of data to make sure you're not overpaying. This next update is not really new, but it is a feature that you should be aware of and could help you better book your flights. And that is baggage integration. Let me show you how to use it and how it can be really helpful. So let's just do Minneapolis to Chicago. Just for this example, we'll click search. We've got a week in June, doesn't really matter. But as you can see here, our top flight search here is some country, $158. But as we know, especially these days, baggage is very expensive. So if you know what kind of baggage you're going to be traveling with, it can be really helpful to include that price into the price of the baggage, into your total ticket price. So that way you get a clear picture of what that flight is actually going to cost you. So say, for example, you know you're going to Chicago for a week and you're going to need a checked bag, which I would highly recommend not traveling with checked baggage, but say you need one. You're going to go up to the top filters and you're going to click on bags. This is where you can add in your checked baggage. So I'm going to click one checked baggage. And now you're going to see that my flight prices have changed dramatically. That same some country flight instead of $158, now it's $248. This is going to give you a much more clear picture of what you're actually going to be paying for your flight. This is a mistake that I've made many of times, particularly when booking budget airlines, because they'll put their ticket prices super low, but then they'll way overcharge for their baggage and you end up paying the same price as like a Delta Airlines flight. So this can be really helpful, especially if you know what kind of baggage you're going to be traveling with. Also, one thing to note is if you are looking for more information on baggage size, what a carry-on costs on a specific airline or a checked baggage cost, you can go at the very top here underneath top departing flights. You're going to scroll over and you're going to see this optional charges and bag fees may apply. You can go ahead and click on that blue highlighted bag fees. And it's going to pop up all the different airlines and it's going to be a hyperlink to that specific airlines policies, because every airline is a little bit different. So I'm just going to go ahead and click on Delta here. And this is going to give you all of your baggage rules, the sizes, what it's going to cost. And this can be a quick way to gather some of that information as it can be pretty confusing, especially for those of you that travel internationally as the rules are very different than here in the US. So using that feature on Google Flights to integrate your baggage can be a great way to get a much better picture on what your flight is going to cost. Okay, the next update I want to talk about is not necessarily super new, but it's something I want to touch on because I haven't mentioned it in my other videos. So what we're going to do is we're going to go to the Explore tab. And in my opinion, this is still a great place to find really good flight deals, but it might be getting beat out by that AI stuff. But anyway, still a really good place to find deals. And the Explore tab is going to pull up your map and all that good stuff. But say you want to go to, let's say Paris, Paris, France. You've never been there before and you want to go there. On the left-hand side, when you plug in Paris from your home airport, if you scroll down, you're going to get a bunch of different information about that destination, which can be really helpful when booking your trip there. This is not necessarily going to save you money, but it might help you decide which destination you want to travel to based on cost. So you can see here, it's going to automatically pull up some stays so you can get an understanding of how much it's going to cost you to stay in that destination. Because as we know, flights are only a part of the cost of travel. So you want to take into account all this other stuff. So you can see some average, like a $208 average night stay at a three-star hotel. If you scroll even further, you can see the best times to visit. So your peak season is going to be July through October. And then your off season is kind of in those winter months there. But this can be a great way to save money too, if you want to book in the off seasons. This can be a great time to travel, even those shoulder seasons. And you can get all that information here to help use when finding great deals on flights. And then my personal favorite, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you're going to see different questions or frequently asked questions from people that travel to this destination. It might be travel requirements. It might be cost of food. It might be getting around, like what's the best way to get transportation? Is it train? Is it Uber? You name it. Utilizing the explore tabs, and I only find the destination you want to go to, but even diving further into information about when's the best time to visit, how much it's going to cost you when you get there, can all help you save money when you're traveling. So don't skip looking into that stuff when you're deciding where to travel. The last update I'm going to share with you in this video is something that I didn't even realize I needed, but it's kind of nice. So let me show you what it is here. So we're going to do a flight from Zurich to Paris, and we're going to click search. Now you can see our normal search options here. You can see our top departing flights, but right underneath the top departing flights, you're going to see train options. And Google has done some recent updates to include the expansion of train routes, which is kind of weird to find trains on Google Flights, but depending on your destination, it's actually really nice because sometimes the train option is a lot cheaper and in some cases might even save you time. And as we know, trains are just way easier. They're way more comfortable. And what's nice is then you can just go ahead and click on this link, and it'll bring you to the sites that you need to book that train. We can do another example here. Let's go, let's do one in the US. So let's go Minneapolis here. US is a little bit harder to find train routes, but let's go Minneapolis to Chicago. And you can see here a train to consider, which is a super long train, seven hours and 32 minutes, and it's $41. But hey, maybe you've got time on your hands and you want to do a train and get some scenery. This is a really nice addition to Google Flights, particularly for certain places. So don't be afraid to look at the train options underneath Google Flights when you're booking your flight. I feel like the way I've been using Google Flights as of late has completely changed with these updates. I'm using it to not only find and book flights, but also to make sure I'm getting the best deal possible, which is super nice as flight deals are increasingly more hard to find these days. Let me know down in the comments if you've been able to test out some of these new updates. Also, if you've been able to find some crazy deals, I would love to hear your stories down in the comments. Thank you so much for watching this one. If you enjoyed it, 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.