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Wow, talk about impressive. Just curious about the tech behind this. Do they just cache a bunch of average prices together between major airports and just set a

by bryanh 16y ago

Wow, talk about impressive. Just curious about the tech behind this. Do they just cache a bunch of average prices together between major airports and just set a max limit? Surely it can't do fully comprehensive search at the speed it runs at.

buss 16y ago
That's my guess.
- hugh3 16y ago
  That would also explain why it only lets you set a month, and not a day.
borism 16y ago
judging from other Kayak tools I've seen they cache searches by actual users. plus they might have robots crawling popular searches at different dates. so it benefits to be around very large hubs like NYC, but if you're out in the country you may not be so lucky.
jojopotato 16y ago
They're definitely showing you historical prices from their cache. Kayak gets such a huge volume of traffic that they can use the lowest price on that route seen in the last 24 hours and have pretty good coverage/accuracy. Personally, this thread is eye opening because I work on a similar product. I saw this when it came out (a couple weeks ago maybe). My first impression wasn't that it was particularly impressive, but apparently I just don't know what's cool for users in a travel product =P
- nooneelse 16y ago
  The novice sometimes has "the potential" fogging their view of reality. While for the expert, sometimes the shadow from what-is-lacking mountain covers both.
tomhoward 16y ago
Their database only contains cached results from previous searches. Kayak doesn't store the entire population of flights themselves - they forward users' queries onto a 3rd party flight inventory provider (ITA Software), then cache the results to power services like these. This means that results are likely to be current and complete on popular routes, but far less so on the long tail.
- jojopotato 16y ago
  If I had to guess, they probably cache as aggressively as their contract with ITA allows because Kayak gets charged per search by ITA. *edit: From the two ITA contract that I know/have heard about anyways.
  - ojbyrne 16y ago
    And from what I know, ITA doesn't allow you to cache at all.

by bryanh 16y ago

buss 16y ago

That's my guess.

hugh3 16y ago
That would also explain why it only lets you set a month, and not a day.

borism 16y ago

judging from other Kayak tools I've seen they cache searches by actual users. plus they might have robots crawling popular searches at different dates. so it benefits to be around very large hubs like NYC, but if you're out in the country you may not be so lucky.

jojopotato 16y ago

They're definitely showing you historical prices from their cache. Kayak gets such a huge volume of traffic that they can use the lowest price on that route seen in the last 24 hours and have pretty good coverage/accuracy. Personally, this thread is eye opening because I work on a similar product. I saw this when it came out (a couple weeks ago maybe). My first impression wasn't that it was particularly impressive, but apparently I just don't know what's cool for users in a travel product =P

nooneelse 16y ago
The novice sometimes has "the potential" fogging their view of reality. While for the expert, sometimes the shadow from what-is-lacking mountain covers both.

tomhoward 16y ago

Their database only contains cached results from previous searches. Kayak doesn't store the entire population of flights themselves - they forward users' queries onto a 3rd party flight inventory provider (ITA Software), then cache the results to power services like these. This means that results are likely to be current and complete on popular routes, but far less so on the long tail.

jojopotato 16y ago
If I had to guess, they probably cache as aggressively as their contract with ITA allows because Kayak gets charged per search by ITA. *edit: From the two ITA contract that I know/have heard about anyways.
- ojbyrne 16y ago
  And from what I know, ITA doesn't allow you to cache at all.