One of the primary applications of the internet is its ability to find just about anything. But unless you know exactly where to look, chances are you use some kind of search engine to do the locating for you. Google for example, is one of the most popular search engines out there. It¹s uncanny how the thing for which you are looking is usually somewhere within the first page of hits. In fact, more often than not it¹s usually within the first five on that first page.

But sometimes the thing you want to find may not just be at one location.

Take travel for example. More specifically let¹s look at airline flight schedules along with the associated rates and destinations. With so many airlines out there, just going to one airline website at a time would take way to much of your valuable time. There are of course, specialty websites that deal with travel such as Travelocity, Priceline and Expedia. But those sites as well as travel agency sites mostly offer the particular deals they have made, and then only with the participating airlines with which they¹ve contracted.

Kayak.com is very different. If you have to categorize what they are, they are what is known as a meta-search engine. And unlike the aforementioned websites, Kayak itself sells nothing. A meta-search engine is a website that sends your query to multiple search engine databases simultaneously.

Some of the better ones let you actually refine your search query on the fly while you watch your refinements appear on the meta-search engine¹s result page. Kayak is one of those better ones.

When you log onto Kayak.com, you are presented with a simple search form that asks where you wish to depart and from where you want to return if it¹s to be a round-trip. Or you can do a multiple city thing as well. On that same page you enter the associates dates and time, number of people traveling and class. There¹s also a handy ³Prefer Nonstop² checkbox. That¹s pretty much it. Clicking the ³Search multiple sites² button starts the action.

On a well-designed result page, you actually see all of the hundreds of airline websites being scanned for their up to the moment information.

Kayak has the ability to go to most all of the airline databases, extract their information and reformat it into something it can display for you. The animated display also shows you an interim status of specific airlines that are being scanned at that moment. All of this takes only a few moments.

When Kayak is done, you are presented with an ordered list of flights that meet your search criteria. The default is to sort them by price, from the most economical to the very expensive. You¹ll be amazed at the diversity of fares that go to the same places. You can also sort by other criteria such as Airline or number of stops.

On the left side of the result page are sliders which you can drag to either widen or narrow your depart and arrival times. As you move them, the listing of flights that match instantly updates to match. Further refinements let you alter the number of stops and the specific airlines you want to include or exclude. You can also expand the number of nearby airports your search will cover simply by clicking in the corresponding checkboxes next to the automatically located airport names. Another slide bar lets you alter the price range you are willing to accept.

Once you find the flights in which you are interested, Kayak provides links that provide further details about the flights as well as a direct link to the airline or service that has those tickets available for purchase.

Remember that Kayak itself sells nothing. It¹s a free service. And that¹s one of its strongest points, even more so than its really great meta-search ability. Kayak is advertising driven, making its money from unobtrusive ad links on the right side of the results page which are on par with what you see on Google. They really don¹t interfere with anything.

While Kayak is primarily an air fare meta-search engine, you can also use it to check on hotels, car rentals and other associated deals. But Kayak¹s main strength is finding the flights that go where you want to go along with the best airfares out there and it does so in an unbiased manner that I really like.

Meta-search engines are wonderful in that they can really even out the playing field and often give you a more honest or realistic result since they show you exactly what all of the competition is offering and on one easy to look at result page. The next time you plan to take a trip, you should check out Kayak.com and see what everyone out there is offering, all at once.

www.kayak.com