Overview
Having the best possible integration with Google Flights (GFS) can significantly improve an airline’s performance on the platform. The Opportunity dashboard is a tool that helps you understand how to increase your revenue from Google Flights. By providing insights into the number of missed booking opportunities on our platform, the dashboard helps you identify areas to improve your integration with Google Flights and increase referrals and conversion rates.
The Opportunity dashboard is based on four key performance metrics: participation rate, link quality, price quality and fare products. We quantified the impact of these metrics to arrive at an estimated incremental revenue opportunity value.
At the top of the dashboard, you will find the value of these four metrics for the selected period, and the estimated incremental revenue and referral opportunity (see more details in the next section). Below, there is a configurable waterfall chart that quantifies these metrics into your revenue opportunity. Finally, the dashboard provides a deep dive into each of these sections.
Revenue
Revenue over the selected period is the base metric for all estimates in the dashboard, and it represents your bookings that originated from Google Flights. The accuracy of the dashboard's calculations depends on the availability of conversion data from our partners. Please reach out to us via the Contact Us Form to discuss enabling conversion data.
When we don’t have your conversion data, we default to an example conversion rate, which we apply to the total referred value. In either case, the dashboard allows you to set a base conversion rate that affects the revenue calculation for the selected period and all subsequent estimates:
To set your conversion rate, select a percentage from the custom pulldown menu. You can select any whole percentage number up to 20%. Once you’ve selected the conversion rate, it will appear as the default rate and the dashboard will update accordingly.
You can set the selected time period using the Dates picker at the top of the window.
When revenue opportunity is mentioned, that refers to the extra revenue that we estimate you could have earned from GFS over the selected period, i.e., the delta between how much we estimate you could have earned, and how much you actually earned.
The Overview Panel
The overview panel shows the estimated revenue you could earn by meeting certain metrics. You can see how the estimated revenue changes by adjusting the metrics from the pulldown menu on the right side, each corresponding to a bar in the graph. The last bar of the graph displays the total estimated revenue. The bar graph calculates estimated revenue by factoring interdependent effects of the metrics. For example, the participation rate will produce greater estimated revenue if your fare products are enabled. Adjusting the metrics in the Overview panel will only affect the information displayed in this panel. All other panels display information on these metrics based on your Google data and conversion rate.
The Metrics
Below the Overview panel, more detailed information on each metric is displayed in its own panel.
Participation rate
The participation rate metric measures how often your booking links are shown on our platform, as a percentage of the global impressions where you were present in the selected itinerary. The best possible value is 100%. The more often your booking links are shown, the more opportunities you have to generate revenue from Google Flights. This metric is also displayed in the GFS Competitiveness dashboard, and its help center article contains more information on how it is calculated.
One great way to improve your participation rate is to implement deep links, which GFS shows more often. There are many other possible reasons for links not to be displayed, such as rules around the number of slices in the itinerary, or whether an infant was selected. Please contact us through the Contact Us Form to learn more about how to improve your participation rate.
Link quality
The link quality metric measures how often your booking links work correctly. Using our crawlers, we can determine the number of failing links and estimate the potential revenue lost due to them. This metric is also displayed in the GFS Quality dashboard, with the name Itinerary Not Found, and its help center article contains more information about it. Please reach out to us using the form linked above if you are unable to see this metric, but would like to.
Having more deep links typically helps with link quality issues. You can also explore potential link quality issues using the Debug tab of the GFS Quality dashboard.
Note: Improving this metric should not provide an opportunity to increase your referral value, since GFS users click failing links anyway. It does, however, provide an opportunity to increase your conversion rate, and thus your revenue.
Price Quality
The price quality metric measures how often the price in Google Flights is consistent with the price on your website (within a 2% threshold). We know that conversion rates tend to drop when users face price discrepancies, so we assume a lower conversion rate for these cases. This metric is also displayed in the GFS Quality dashboard, with the name Price Discrepancy, and its help center article contains more information about it. Please reach out to us using the form linked above if you are unable to see this metric, but would like to.
You can explore potential price quality issues using the Debug tab of the GFS Quality dashboard.
Note: Improving this metric should not provide an opportunity to increase your referral value, since GFS users click failing links anyway. It does, however, provide an opportunity to increase your conversion rate, and thus your revenue.
Fare Products
The fare products metric is a simple check on whether you have enabled fare products with Google Flights. By enabling Fare Products and providing GFS users with one more opportunity to purchase higher value fares, you can receive higher referral values, thus increasing your revenue from GFS.
If you already have Fare Products enabled, the dashboard displays 0 opportunity related to this factor. That is expected, as you are already reaping the benefits from this feature. You can learn more about your Fare Products performance on GFS by looking at the bottom of the GFS Referrals dashboard and its help center article. If you’d like to enable Fare Products, please Contact Us.
Note:
Each individual section calculates the upside of improving on that metric independently. However, these performance metrics aren’t independent of each other. For example, by increasing your participation rate and enabling fare products, you can see compounding benefits from more referrals that also have a higher value than before. Thus, when putting it all together in the Overview and Unrealized Opportunity sections, we take these dependencies into account.