Google Maps adds a live view for popular times at venues

Google announced they have expanded their popular times feature within Google Maps to show you a live view of the data. Google Maps now will tell you how busy or slow a specific venue is in real time.

Google said they have added a “real-time look at how crowded a place is right now, to help you decide where and when to go.”

The GIF below shows a red live indicator icon that shows the real-time data, with an option to mark if it is correct or not.

Google orginally added the popular times feature in July of 2015, and then also added, shortly after, how long people stay in that venue.

This new view gives you an actual real-time view of that, which is important for holiday shopping.

In addition, Google will also show you the business hours of stores within stores. So if you run a store like CVS, and there is a pharmacy in the store, you can list both the normal store hours and the pharmacy hours.