If you have the choice, you'd probably want to go to grocery stores and other businesses when they're not crowded. With a few taps, Google Maps can tell you how busy a store, restaurant, park, or other location is at that very moment and at other times of the day.

You can find this information on the Google Maps website in your browser or in the Google Maps app for iPhone, iPad, and Android. Search for the name of a store, restaurant, business, or other location — it even works for parks.

First, click or tap the name of the location to view more information about it. Look for the "Popular Times" chart in the panel — you may need to scroll down to see it. Look for a "Live" time that tells you how busy a business is right now.

Google Maps showing popular times for a location .

You can also click the name of the weekday and select another day of the week to check when the location is usually the busiest. Do more people tend to shop on Wednesday or Sunday? Is the store less busy early in the morning or late at night? The chart will tell you.

Google Maps showing how busy a store is on a specific day.

This information isn't available for every location, but it is available for most locations you'll come across. Google doesn't track this information for locations that don't "get enough visits" from people who have enabled Google Location History.

How Does It Work?

This feature takes advantage of the location data Google receives from people who choose to enable Google Location History on their phones. Using this data, Google will estimate how busy it is at a particular location right now.

It also remembers historical data and can average it to show you when a store is usually the most — and least — busy every week. Google uses a very similar tactic for tracking traffic conditions on roads in Google Maps.