Google is already showing a lot of information about businesses, from the basics like opening hours through to what their busiest times are. Their latest feature will be showing you wait times at restaurants.
The feature is rolling out to Search – and soon to Maps as well, will show you the wait times at nearly a million sit-down restaurants around the world. This isn’t for restaurants requiring reservations, but the walk-in restaurants. Similar to the busy times, a bar graph will show you the busiest times.
The wait times will be granular as well, you can see the current wait times, or if you want to visit later you can get an estimate of how long the wait time will be at that time. You can also see a summary of each days wait times so you can try to go at a quieter time.
The data has been aggregated from historical anonymised data, making it fairly accurate but it’s not a 100% guarantee. If you’re looking for a night out, you’ll soon be able to check this data so keep an eye on it next time you search for a restaurant.
