How often have you been turned down from your favourite restaurant or bar just because the place is full? Well, not anymore. Google has the solution for people planning their day out with their friends or loved ones.
Avoid any last-minute embarrassment while on a date by looking up how busy your favourite place is before going there. Google's Popular Times has been updated with real-time tracking feature that can tell you how busy a location and how much time people are actually spending there.
"Since introducing the Popular Times feature in Google Search and Maps last year, you've been able to check how busy a place typically is at different times of the week," Google said in a statement. "Just in time for the Black Friday swarms, we're adding a real-time look at how crowded a place is right now, to help you decide where and when to go," it added.
People can search any location by name using Google or Google Maps and get the live look of how busy a place is in real time. Previously, Popular Times integrated within Google search engine used to give an idea of how crowded a place is throughout the day. But real-time assessment is worthwhile.
In case you are wondering how the Popular Times feature work in real time, Google said that it uses anonymised location data from smartphones to estimate how many people are present at any given location in real time. The anonymous tracking works only when users opt-in to store location data.
While people can take advantage of this feature to manage their schedules, businesses can too leverage Google's data to plan itinerary for the day.
The new real-time Popular Times feature is not live yet, but it should be sooner than later. Google has been gathering detailed information about businesses, places one visits, restaurants, bars, airports and more. With series of questions like if the place has Wi-Fi, serves alcohol or whether it is kid-friendly, Google will pass that information on to the world as a part of the detailed review of a given place.
