Today, Google wants to make it easier to find flights on your mobile device, as they have announced that their Flight Search feature has come to Android and iOS devices. Now, when you search “flights from X to X” on your mobile device, you’ll see the same Flight Search box that you’ve seen on your desktop for a few months now.
Let’s say you search “flights from Chicago to Daytona” on your phone, the Flight Search box will now appear just below the ads. There, you can edit your departure dates and click on the flight links for more information.
From the Google Inside Search blog:
The Flight Search feature on mobile browsers offers all the benefits of Flight Search on desktop:
- Find flights quickly with results that load instantly and a list that’s easy to scan.
- Discover places to go on a map – see ticket prices for various destinations by surfing the map. You can filter by price, airline, or flight duration.
- Find the best time to go – Click the calendar icon to see what dates will get you low prices.
Google unveiled Flight Search back in September of 2011, and at that time they were available only when a user clicked the “flights” option on the left-hand box on the results page. In December, Google integrated the Flight Search box into the search results, as long as you search the right phrase (flights from X to X).
Soon after that, travel websites complained that the Flight Search box was pushing down their links on SERPs. They said that since they rely on Google for 10%-20% of their traffic, this was a major inconvenience.
