On Tuesday, Google announced in a blog post that they will be adding a new feature to Google Search and Google Maps that will be able to show you estimated wait times for restaurants around you.
According to the company, the feature will start up on Google Search with Google Maps to follow.
This feature is an expansion of the company’s already existing feature, “popular times,” that is able to show when restaurants near you are particularly busy throughout the day. But, now it will specifically tell you how long it will take to get a table before you even leave the house.
Google has been working on using this data from Google Maps’ install base for a few years. Now, when you search for a restaurant, Google will display a pop-up box that shows the live or historical data labeled as “busy,” “usually busy,” “usually not busy,” along with the wait time.
Below the popular times chart, there’s also a new section that can help consumers plan their visit by showing how long people usually stay at the restaurant or business (e.g. “People typically spend 45 mins to 2 hr here.”)
According to Gizmodo, Google is “algorithmically calculating its estimates based on data gathered from the millions of people who’ve enabled location tracking on their phones.”
The feature will be used by almost a million restaurants listed worldwide on Google Search.