Google Maps: how to choose the best time for shopping or restaurants

The countless improvements Google has made to its maps service, Maps, have made it one of the essential tools of the company. We have already talked at length about the best tutorials for mastering Google Maps on Android, so in this article we will focus on one of the tricks offered by Google workers themselves.

Google Maps: how to choose the best time for shopping or restaurants

This is the use of Popular Hours, an innovative Maps function that allows you to know which are the least crowded hours of shops, restaurants, gyms, etc., or any commercial activity on which users provide their visit data. on Google. With this information you can to plan al better your visit and thus avoid the usual expectations and stress when you visit a place full of people.



Google Maps: how to choose the best time to go to shops or restaurants

We were nearing the end of 2017 when Google advanced that it would soon tell you how long you would have to wait to get a table at a restaurant. He then presented a function that it soon arrived on Google Search and Maps.

The advantages of this tool are obvious, as it allows you to know in advance if you will have to wait a long time for that steak that is cooked so well in your favorite restaurant, if you can buy that garment you like so much with peace of mind or if you will find free machines in your Gym.

These are some examples, because popular hours also appear in museums, public offices and other establishments. To allow you to choose the best time to visit your favorite shop or restaurant, we explain how to use this feature in the Google Maps app for Android.


  • Open Google Maps and enter the name of the shop, restaurant, gym, etc. you want to visit.
  • Select the bar below to open a window with all the information about it.
  • Scroll down until you find all the waiting time data for the chosen facility. The Popular Hours section consists of three key elements:
  1. Peak hours: you can select the day of the week you will visit the activity to see the corresponding data.
  2. Graphic: shows you the situation of the structure at different times of the day so you know if it is very busy or not at the time you will visit it.
  3. Duration of visits: the last item of Popular Hours informs you about the average time customers usually spend in the business, based on user visits in the last few weeks.

Google Maps: how to choose the best time for shopping or restaurants



With all this information, it is particularly easy to plan your visit to shops, restaurants or gyms to avoid meeting many people in the factories and thus reduce waiting times. As mentioned above, please note that this visit data is also present in Google Search.

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