Does Clearing Your Search History Actually Affect Flight Prices?

Travel + Leisure

3 days ago

If you've ever searched for a flight, exited the tab to mull it over, and returned to find the fare mysteriously higher, you're not alone. You've also probably heard the advice: clear your cookies, switch browsers, and search in incognito mode. The idea that airlines or booking sites track your searches to hike prices remains one of the most persistent travel myths of the digital age. To find out whether there's any truth to this widely circulated belief, we asked travel experts to weigh in on what's fact, what's fiction, and what's really driving those seemingly ever-changing fares.
Katy Nastro is a travel expert at Going (formerly Scott's Cheap Flights), a flight price alert platform that helps travelers find the best flight deals.
Sophia Lin is the director of product management for travel and local at Google Search.
Jesse Neugarten is the founder of Dollar Flight Club, a subscription-based travel site dedicated to helping travelers snag discounted airfare.
Despite what many travelers believe, there's no concrete evidence that airlines or booking sites raise prices based on how often you search for a route. Experts say the pricing shifts you see are more about market demand than digital surveillance. "There is a common misconception that repeated search behavior will lead to not just a different, but higher outcome," explains Katy Nastro, travel expert at Going. This is why people are often told to clear their cache or cookies or to use an incognito browser. However, that's more travel myth than truth—something that's stuck around thanks to anecdotal frustration and online hearsay. Per the pro, "There is no credible data source that suggests repeated searching is tracked and therefore manipulated to higher pricing."
According to Sophia Lin, director of product management for travel and local at Google Search, "Ticket prices are constantly changing and being updated across different data providers, even from second to second. And every day, our systems are computing an enormous number of possible ticket combinations for trips around the world."
Nastro offers a similar perspective, explaining that travelers are "seeing the market move in real time." And if anyone would know, it's Nastro and her team, who "run hundreds of searches a day, if not thousands by the end of the week, and have done so for years, and yet we still have not seen this mythic pattern some swear by." She continues: "Our founder, Scott Keyes, even went so far as duplicating a search 100 times in an hour to see if there would be any upward movement—and guess what, there was not!"
Jesse Neugarten, founder of Dollar Flight Club, echoes these sentiments, telling Travel + Leisure , "While it's a widely held belief that flight prices go up the more you search for a route, there's no hard evidence that browsing history or repeated searches alone directly cause price increases." Instead, he explains that travelers are often observing a combination of natural price fluctuations and cached data, which can create the illusion of price changes, bringing us to our next point.
While it might seem random, airfare pricing is anything but. Behind the scenes, airlines use dynamic algorithms that constantly recalculate fares based on shifting variables. According to Neugarten, flight prices are determined by complex, real-time algorithms that adjust based on factors like "seat inventory, booking trends, time to departure, competitor pricing, and external factors like weather or fuel costs."
Additionally, explains Nastro, "When you see prices fluctuate in real time, you are seeing the airlines trying to adjust based on those factors." Additionally, she says, "They have fare buckets." Think of it like this: Airlines allocate a set number of seats to each bucket for a certain period, though those allocations can shift based on the factors mentioned earlier. Once fare bucket X sells out, a new, often higher-priced bucket takes its place. So when you notice sudden jumps or drops in airfare, you're likely seeing fare buckets updating in real time.
To illustrate the scale of this complexity, Lin explains that there can be seemingly endless ticket combinations for trips between Los Angeles and London. This is especially true once you factor in variables like connecting flights and competing booking sites, so you could end up with just as many different fare prices. A person looking up flights on their phone.
Margot Cavin/Travel + Leisure
In summary, no. "There is no record of flight searches being improved by using incognito mode or clearing cookies," says Nastro. Both she and Neugarten tell T+L that the "benefit" is primarily psychological. Nastro likes to think of it like a lucky t-shirt on game day: Is it really the shirt that led to the win—or was it more likely a good night's sleep, solid training, and preparation? She encourages travelers to focus on tools like flight price alerts for the best chance to snag deals on airfare.
Per Neugarten, "Searching in incognito mode or clearing cookies might prevent your browser from showing cached results, which can make it appear like prices have changed." However, he adds, "In most cases, the underlying pricing, especially when powered by predictive algorithms, isn't tied to your cookies. It's fluctuating due to real-time changes in inventory and demand."
Lin reinforces this idea: "Incognito mode, browsing history, search history, or switching devices won't impact the prices we show on Google Flights." She adds, "Unfortunately for deal-seekers, it's not true."