Virtually everyone is using it but almost no one knows exactly or even has slightly a idea about how it's working. So let me tell you what's behind the cost search enginge you're using to analyse costs for particular products. Of course there is not one way such search engines work, but I want to tell you about the most popular ones.
The biggest and most popular cost comparing Web Search Eninge use the aggregation of a centralized information base. For example I want to select those search Web Search Engines which analyze the cost of flights. In this special sphere a centralized information base does exist. Every huge air travel company puts the data about their flights into this information base. In the times ahead the Internet every travelling agency utilized the entries from this information base to create their client an offering. Nowadays everybody is able to check this information on his own. But of course its much more relaxed to use a search engine or like in the early days hiring a travelling agency doing the job for you. Only through this information base the search engines are able to provide you a answer of your look for within minutes. Because they don't look through and through this information live. They prefilter the data and solely gives you what you are looking for. The air travel companies put the information into the information base because of course they wish to trade their flights. The web services or search engines filtrate this information for you because they make money through ads.
So nowadays you are able to be your own traveling agent and check the cheapest price on your own. Furthermore there are a lot of Web services which are offering slightly the same, but always with infinitesimal divergence in the results. Those different numbers exists because every web service builts his own algorithm to filtrate the info in the information base. For best results I recommend that you use not only one but a lot of those Web services. Maybe check out Flüge vergleichen for more Infos. They are all free because they are paid through advertising, and it's a thing of minutes to check out a some of those Web services to receive the genuine lowest price for the flight of your dreams.
I hope this information helps you and I am going to go much more into detail in my following post where I will particularly explain the Dijkstra algorithm which is utilized to get the best results or the cheapest price or the shortest . So come back and learn much more about the service you use nearly day-after-day .