Google will now show how busy a business in in the local business knowledge panel within the Google search results.  The new feature is an addition to the “popular times” feature that shows how busy a specific business is on various times and days of the week.  The new feature adds a “live” tag to the results, detailing how busy – or not – a business is.

This is live in the search results now, and shows in both the local knowledge panel in the search results as well as on the map results page too.

It doesn’t show just for restaurant related businesses, but other types of stores as well.

When you click “Correct?” it allows you to submit feedback about the current live busy status.

It doesn’t show just if a business is busy at the time, it also gives live results showing that it isn’t busy – it will show “not busy”, “not too busy” or “a little busy”.

Google pulls the data from patrons who have Google Location History opted in.

In addition to the new live feature, Google has also added a feature that allows stores to give more detailed information about departments within a business that have different hours, such as the pharmacy department or gardening department within a store.