Planning to visit a store to purchase some groceries? Wondering Whether the store is overcrowded or decently occupied? Don’t worry, you need not step out of your house to see how busy a store is, at a given point of time.

All you need to do is open Google Maps. A recent update made by Google Maps added a live feature. This works for pubs, hotels, restaurants, parks, stores, etc. One can access the same across all devices: iPad, Android Device, and iPhone.

To view the information, you need to

* Tap on the name of the place or the store.
* Next, click on “Popular times” as that appears in the panel chart.
* Scroll down a bit to see a tab that says “Live” time. This reflects information about the store timings and also how busy is it at a particular time.

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The chart isn’t only for the current time but extends to all days of the week. You can plan in advance when to visit the shop coming Sunday. However, the efficiency of the historical data might not be the same as that of the live data. So even if you have already planned, keep a check on the live status.

For locations that are extremely popular and have regular visits, this feature works best. It might not be available for less visited places. So, you can check accordingly.

The core concept here is that Google tracks the location of users live. Ever noticed the tab where Google asks your permission to track your location, yes that’s what drives data for this feature. Google remembers the data and uses it to feed value to the busy now feature

Attractive, right?