Google has added a feature to its search engine that proves to be really useful whenever you have to decide in which restaurant to eat, for lunch or dinner, all over the world.
The function is that of waiting times, which allows you to find out if a restaurant is full and how long you have to wait before you can sit at the table during peak times, so that you can avoid the most popular places in the area if you have hurry or you are not willing to wait.
Waiting times are not calculated in real time, instead they are estimated based on the historical information of the place.
For example, Google can tell me that if I go to eat at a certain restaurant in the city center on Saturday evening during rush hour I will have to wait an hour to sit down, while on Wednesday only 15 minutes.
While the example of the popular restaurant that I have made can be taken for granted, for many places, especially if you are traveling in unfamiliar areas, it can be decisive information for knowing where to eat and avoid crowded places, where probably even after having sitting will wait for longer than normal.
The estimate of the wait is not only based on the history, but also on the residence times calculated through the location service of the phone where Google Maps is installed, a bit like the estimate of traffic on the roads.
Using this data, Google can calculate when people enter and leave a restaurant to estimate waiting times.
You can see what is to be expected in a specific restaurant in the tab that appears using the Google or Google Maps search engine .
For the moment it only works on Google, where you can search for the name of a restaurant and then discover the chart in the tab on the right, the one with the times with the most visits .
The graph can be clicked in order to display information on the maximum waiting time in the selected hour .
Below is written what is the peak of waiting, what time and the average stay, that is how long people sit and eat .
This information changes according to the day of the week chosen.
All this information comes from a set of anonymous historical data, which can be wrong in exceptional cases.
Therefore, nothing excludes finding a restaurant full at a time that was indicated as quiet, because maybe there is a party or a particular event.
While calling the restaurant to book is still the best move to make, when you have to choose which place to go, it may be important to know first how many people are frequented.
READ ALSO: 20 most useful and hidden Google Maps functions
The function is that of waiting times, which allows you to find out if a restaurant is full and how long you have to wait before you can sit at the table during peak times, so that you can avoid the most popular places in the area if you have hurry or you are not willing to wait.
Waiting times are not calculated in real time, instead they are estimated based on the historical information of the place.
For example, Google can tell me that if I go to eat at a certain restaurant in the city center on Saturday evening during rush hour I will have to wait an hour to sit down, while on Wednesday only 15 minutes.
While the example of the popular restaurant that I have made can be taken for granted, for many places, especially if you are traveling in unfamiliar areas, it can be decisive information for knowing where to eat and avoid crowded places, where probably even after having sitting will wait for longer than normal.
The estimate of the wait is not only based on the history, but also on the residence times calculated through the location service of the phone where Google Maps is installed, a bit like the estimate of traffic on the roads.
Using this data, Google can calculate when people enter and leave a restaurant to estimate waiting times.
You can see what is to be expected in a specific restaurant in the tab that appears using the Google or Google Maps search engine .
For the moment it only works on Google, where you can search for the name of a restaurant and then discover the chart in the tab on the right, the one with the times with the most visits .
The graph can be clicked in order to display information on the maximum waiting time in the selected hour .
Below is written what is the peak of waiting, what time and the average stay, that is how long people sit and eat .
This information changes according to the day of the week chosen.
All this information comes from a set of anonymous historical data, which can be wrong in exceptional cases.
Therefore, nothing excludes finding a restaurant full at a time that was indicated as quiet, because maybe there is a party or a particular event.
While calling the restaurant to book is still the best move to make, when you have to choose which place to go, it may be important to know first how many people are frequented.
READ ALSO: 20 most useful and hidden Google Maps functions
