Next time while looking to pick a restaurant for your candle light dinner or planning for the monthly grocery shopping, Google it. These will defiantly help you to avoid those long queues and waiting period.
Google has added a slew of advanced features to its Search and Maps. These include real-time visit information, popular times graph and typical visit duration of customers on a shop or restaurant. Using this information you can decide when to visit the shop or restaurant and estimate rush during a period of time.
Popular times graph
The popular time’s graph was launched first in July 2015, and Google has added more features to it. It typically shows how busy a shop or restaurant or even a location (like Museum, Zoo etc) during different times of the day. These will help you to decide a time to visit the location and avoid queues. The data are based on the average popularity of the location over the last several weeks.
Realtime visit
These show a real-time view of how crowded a place is right now. It is marked by a pink bar on the popular time’s graph and you can easily compare it to the usual level of activity. The data here is updated in real time and crowdsourced where you can also share your opinion about the crowd in a location.
Visit duration
Visit duration data shows how much time customers typically spend at a shop or restaurant. So you can effectively plan when to leave or arrive at a location.
Combining all these data, let’s explain you with an example. Search Google for “Big Bazaar” and the search result will show all Big Bazaar stores in your area. Clicking any of it will bring up the knowledge graph where you will also find the ‘Popular times’ graph. Here you can see how busy the store is during different times of the day. The Pink bar on the graph will let you know the real-time data of the crowd in the store. There will also be a small tip that shows the typical time spent by people in that store.