How does Google know that this exact tiny restaurant on the 4th floor of a building full of other restaurants and cafes is “usually busy at 8pm on Wednesday”?
In: 70
If you’ve got an Android phone and Google’s location services turned on, The phone will periodically send your location to Google, and if a lot of Android phones are in the same spot, Google will assume the place is busy.
Google might also use a bunch of different indicators to determine who is at a particular restaurant. I don’t know if they actually use these, but they could possibly use:
* If you’re using their free wifi and they have a Google Analytics on their login page
* If the website mentions wait times (e.g. if a restaurant is using Zwift for online orders, their online menu may show “Average wait time: 10 minutes” or similar)
* If a person reviews the restaurant and attaches a timestamped photo
And given that Android has about 70% of the market share and 80% of people own a smartphone, Google can be reasonably confident that a place is busy based on a number of people having suitable phones.
However with this in mind, it’s very easy to [buy a ton of phones and cause a traffic jam](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artist-simon-weckert-google-map-hack-1769187), so busy times may not always be accurate, especially if there’s an equally popular business next door.
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