I use skyscanner and skiplagged for my initial searches, then book direct on an airlines website if i’m able to. Just curious what other sites you all are using these days. I will say that recently I have noticed that sometimes the airlines own website has cheaper fares than these aggregators seem to find. Maybe its because they only crawl every so often, and I’ve caught price drops on the airlines website before the aggregators picked them up.
I usually find the site for the airport and check who flies the routes I am interested in. In some parts of the world, there are airlines that wont get aggregated to Skyscanner.
I also sign up for the email list on the airlines I will potentially use or follow on twitter or IG for sales - especially this time of the year.