How to find great travel deals

Google does not necessarily always have the cheapest flights, though it usually gets pretty darn close. What it does do is offer travelers the best cross-section of cheap flights to specific destinations, as well as the opportunity to compare destination prices if you’re debating where you’d like to go.
Google Flights pulls from a variety of sources when assembling fares, and it does it fast. Other sites can spend a minute or more loading results, which on its face might not seem important. But flight shopping is a time consuming process, so Google’s speediness is much appreciated when it comes to overall time-saving, particularly if it’s just one of several sites you’re using to price-check (which it should be). 
Speed aside, Google’s other great virtue is its “Explore” feature. Say you know you want to visit Southeast Asia, but you haven’t completely nailed down where, exactly, you’d like to go. Google allows huge amounts of flexibility when you’re in the early stages of planning a trip, letting you select entire months as a departure date and entire continents as destinations. From there, you can click around and see which cities and countries are the cheapest to fly into. It’s amazing how wildly results vary, which you might not have known had you not seen it displayed on the map. Google will suggest a list of popular destinations, but travelers can also click around the map and check out prices in real time, with readily available links to airline sites. 
Keep in mind that Google does not include in its search results, so be sure to check that separately when traveling domestic (and occasionally, international).