Using google API to tell how busy a place is

Question

When searching for a venue in google, I can usually see the following image, displaying how busy the place is:

I am looking at the Google Places API docs but cannot seem to find the relevant information.

Answer 1

It's not currently possible to get popular or busy times information from Google's Place API.

However, there is an open feature request in Google's Issue Tracker which I suggest starring to increase visibility and subscribe to future notifications:

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/35827350

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

BestTime.app provides foot traffic data almost similar to Google Popular Times and Foursquare data, but with more functionality. You can also analyze and filter foot traffic data of multiple places in an area. So you can for example filter places and show only bars that are busy on Friday evening, or show only supermarkets that are quiet on Sunday morning. Or sort the places by foot traffic on a specific hour of the day, or the dwell time (how long people visit a place).

You can view the data through their website tools (e.g. on a heatmap), or get the same data through their software API (Software API tutorial). Integrating the API is really useful if you want to e.g. make consumer-focused apps/websites to inform people to which place they should and at what time (i.e. automatically curate lists of best places to go).

In the picture above the BestTime.app Radar tool shows foot traffic data for popular attractions in New York City. On the left the a foot traffic prediction is shown for the whole day. The map is overlayed with a heatmap that indicates the predicted foot traffic intensity for current hour per place. Using the filters, in the right panel, you can narrow down your search by selecting for example only the quiet NYC attractions on Friday afternoon.

Disclosure: I work for BestTime.app