While planning vacations, I often end up on websites like Skyscanner to hunt for the best flight deals.
I am not alone in this quest.
8 out of 10 travelers book through metasearch engines like Google, Skyscanner, and Kayak.
Such a preference is obvious. These options offer convenience in comparing flight details and prices.
When a player like Google is involved in this mix, I felt the need to dig deeper.
So created this Google Flights case study.
Google entered the travel industry with Google Flights. It’s an online flight search and booking platform.
It collects data from various sources to enable travelers to search, filter, and sort through flights, compare prices. And then find the best option based on their preferences.
Here’s a look at how Google Flights became a product-led SEO success story.
The Rise of Google Flights in 2024
Google’s ITA software acquisition in 2010 laid the foundation for Flights.
The combination of Google Flights and Google Hotels was supposed to form the ultimate travel suite for all.
With this goal in mind, Google has introduced a series of product enhancements and UI/UX improvements over the last 10+ years.
At the same time, there’s a gradual increase in the product’s search visibility. (the Google ecosystem – Gmail, Travel, Maps, Assistant, etc.)
This multi-pronged strategy has helped Google Flights take off (pun intended).
Case in point:
Barring the slight dip around the COVID breakout, Skyscanner has shown relative stagnancy in the last decade. On the other hand, Kayak has taken a consistent dive. In contrast, Google Flights shows a steady incline.
Such trends makes this Google Flights case study interesting while understanding product-led SEO.
What is Product-Led SEO?
Product-led SEO is an approach that blends product development with SEO’s technicals and marketing’s fundamentals.
This improves visibility and drives engagement.
You work your way into your target audience’s minds by creating high-quality content and micro tools, related to your product or its uses and applicability.
Then, based on user feedback, you refine the product and related web assets.
In a way, you bake the SEO considerations, user experience, and relevance into the very functionality of your product – and vice versa.
Traditional SEO focuses on optimizing content, website structure, backlinking, etc.
Product led SEO optimizes the product itself to match user intent and satisfy search engine algorithms.
Product-led SEO brings alignment between customer expectations and brand offerings.
This makes way for value-driven customer loyalty.
At the same time, it attracts highly qualified organic leads that convert into revenue rather than casting a wide net to catch stragglers.
Product-led SEO paves the way for product-led growth. This is more sustainable in staying competitive and profitable.
Airbnb and G2 are classic examples of how product-led SEO can put a startup on the global map.
In the Indian context, Zomato has seen notable success with its product-led SEO strategy.
To understand through an example of an Indian fintech, your should check out product led SEO Case Study of Groww.
Google Flights’ SEO Strategy: Deep Dive Into the Key Components
For the sake of simplicity, I have categorized them into three elements – Content Marketing, Link Building, and Technical SEO.
Let’s explore them all individually.
Content Marketing
Google Flights sits on a wealth of highly engaging and value-loaded content collaterals that mold according to the users’ interests. As a result, users enjoy a personalized and highly contextual experience that increases the likelihood of success.
Here’s a preview of what Google Flights does right:
- Detailed Flight Information: Google Flights aggregates data from major airlines, OTAs, and other sources to present users with comprehensive flight details. As a one-stop destination for flight numbers, availability, pricing, and schedule, users can simply make their pick and book their flights.
- Smart Suggestions: Google Flights makes smart suggestions about ticket pricing by comparing it with the typical values. Such recommendations help travelers in making well-informed decisions while booking.
- Travel Date Flexibility: Users can explore the flexible date options to make empowered decisions. They can check out the pricing for the entire month or follow the smart suggestions to identify the best travel dates. They even get the option to set alerts for routes, flights, and price changes.
- Planning and Insights: Google Flights manages to entice curious window shoppers by extending powerful trip planning and destination insights. The homepage suggests popular destinations, while the Explore section makes traveling the whole world a possibility!
- Data Visualization: While Google Flights packs a bunch of features, visual content is the true hero. All the data and insights are readily available in visual formats that make the user experience richer and far more engaging. Whether it is through comparative charts, map layouts, or even calendars, it leaves no stone unturned in presenting information in easy-to-digest forms.
Link Building
When it comes to link-building activities for SEO, Google Flights stands at a unique vantage point.
For starters, the subfolder structure of the website grants it the same domain authority as Google itself. Such reputable standing grants it improved visibility across the search engine.
Here are factors that push Google Flights to the top of the SERPS.
- E-E-A-T Model: Google Flights (google.com/travel/flights) is a subfolder of Google. Such attributes make it the perfect candidate for pushing the high-quality product to the top via the E-E-A-T (Experience – Expertise – Authoritativeness – Trustworthiness) pyramid. In fact, Google Flights would seamlessly keep up with any SEO algorithm changes and updates.
- Branding Consistency: Integrating Google Flights with the original Google product line imparts consistency, familiarity, and brand value to the user experience. As a result, users are more likely to trust, engage, and transact through Google Flights. Such repeat interaction also highlights the product’s value proposition and helps it rank.
- Cross-Platform Promotion: The Googleverse is virtually infinite. With such massive reach and market penetration, it becomes increasingly simple for Google to promote different products across its ecosystem. Whether it targets search engine users or those using Android devices, Google Flights can organically and seamlessly gain visibility.
- Personalization: Google occupies a plump 91.54% of the global search engine market share, which makes it an aggregator of a wealth of information. Despite the rising awareness surrounding data privacy, individuals will gladly trade their data for personalization. Google Flights does exactly that. It understands individualistic needs and builds one-on-one relationships to foster customer loyalty.
Technical SEO
Google Flights also performs excellently from a technical SEO standpoint. After all, Google is a champion of fast load times, mobile responsiveness, and more.
Here’s what helps Google Flights stand apart:
- Site Speed: I ran a site speed test on Google Flights. It took 3.9 seconds to load fully, while the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) took a mere 835 milliseconds. GTmetrix pegs an A grade to this performance, which is impressive and, honestly, unsurprising. Such quick load times reduce user frustrations, decrease bounce rates, and improve page ranking.
- Cross-Device Optimization: Funnily enough, Google Flights fails at Core Web Vitals Assessment for mobile on Lighthouse. Although it lags in performance and accessibility, it does follow all the best practices and carries out SEO for mobile perfectly. Plus, it displays well across different screens, which is good enough for now.
- Structured Data Markup: Google Flights scores a solid 93% when it comes to website structure. Almost all elements carry tags and identifiers detailing their respective information. As a result, users can hover over sections and gain context even before clicking through.
- Crawlability and Indexation: The simple and straightforward structure of Google Flights also improves the navigability, crawlability, and indexation of the website. It follows best practices such as proper sitemap submission, use of canonical tags to avoid duplication, etc., to support its discoverability.
- HTTPS Protocol: The HTTPS protocol of Google Flights ensures a secure browsing experience. Such security grading builds trust with users and is a positive ranking signal for search engines.
In addition to the above, Google Flights has improved significantly in the recent past in terms of UI and UX. For reference, here’s what it looked like in 2011:
Versus what it looks like right now:
Aesthetics are not the only product enhancement that Google has rolled out. Google Flights has seen iterative growth and introduced innovative features to attract a healthy client base. It adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) as early as 2018 to make smarter and more accurate flight predictions and later help mitigate climate impact! Such innovations catalyze product-led SEO growth.
Lessons for Growth Stage Startups
Growth-stage startups have a lot to learn from this Google Flights case study.
To begin with, the key takeaway here is that product-led SEO works – so much so that it can even oust established players!
Here’s a lowdown of the main highlights:
Prioritise building user-centric content
Unique and valuable content that aligns with user intent is a great motivator for them to try out your product. Address specific needs, offer solutions to commonly occurring pain points, and capture user feedback. Doing so helps your product’s value proposition shine and attract organic users.
Build your brand
Nearly 50% of consumers are willing to pay a premium for a strong brand image. Maintain consistency in branding, voice, tonality, typography, and color schemes to connect with customers at an emotional and subconscious level.
Identify untapped target audiences
And identify ways to reach this market segment. Google realized the potential for targeting mobile users and spent no time optimizing the website for different screen sizes and layouts. Such adaptability and agility will sustain growth.
Keep innovating
Even though Google Flights has seen its fair share of ups and downs, the company has weathered even the most disruptive environments, such as the pandemic, by leveraging technological advancements.
Rather than fighting change, embrace the proliferation of technology and pivot it to your advantage.
Future of Product-Led SEO for Google
This Google Flights case study is just one of the many success stories of product-led SEO.
We are yet to witness the increased emphasis on AI-driven personalization. More ways in which user’s behavior and preferences will guide content optimization, journeys, and experiences.
Aside from this wave of innovation, it will also be interesting to see how Google handles a conflict of interest while pitching Google Flights and allowing other OTAs to rank on SERPs.
Reduce Uncertainty as you Grow
Ready to implement Product led SEO yourself?
Easy SEO Roadmap is my actionable PLSEO course driving thousands in quality traffic.
Want to break into Product Growth Leadership without another ‘Product Certification’?
SEO Course for PMs is where you can grow with confidence using Product led SEO execution systems.
Want my personal 1:1 help on growth, product, or systems?
Mentorship is for product managers & growth marketers to get quick alignment or ongoing help.
Founder or CEO with Seed/ Series A+ funding?
Work with me as a Fractional Head of Growth.
You May Like
- SEO Competitor Analysis Template [2024 Update]
- Client Case Study: indiagold SEO: 300k+ Visitors with Product led SEO