Popular Times
When a location is typically busy, as relative occupancy across the hours of a representative week.
What does Popular Times tell me?
Popular Times shows when a location is typically busy. For each day of the week and hour of the day, it reports a relative occupancy: how busy the location tends to be at that time compared with its own peak.
It describes the shape of a typical week, not absolute visit counts.
What questions does it answer?
- When is this location busiest, by day and hour?
- How does the daily rhythm differ between weekdays and weekends?
- When are the quiet windows?
- How does one location's weekly pattern compare with another's?
Reading this cadence
Occupancy is summarised over the period this page covers into one representative week, so day-to-day anomalies are smoothed into a typical pattern.
How it's produced
Visits are aggregated by day of week and hour of day over the period and expressed as a relative occupancy against the location's busiest time.
How to read it
- Values are relative, not counts. A high value means "busy for this location," not a headcount; pair with Foot Traffic if you need volume.
- Compare the shape across locations rather than reading the values as absolute demand.
- Quiet hours may rest on few visits and are noisier.
Related metrics
- Foot Traffic, the volume behind the pattern.
- Visit Length, how long visitors stay once there.
Country- and dataset-specific behaviour (coverage, geography units, exclusions, release timing) is documented on each dataset in its country catalog.
Schema
This is the standard schema for the metric. Always check the schema on the specific dataset you're using, since small variations may occur per country, map, or cadence. See the list of datasets using this metric below.
Map columns (e.g. ZIP code, state, brand, polygon) are usually exposed on each dataset as available columns that aren't included by default. They're not listed here because each dataset is connected to a different map and therefore has a different set of map columns available. Open a specific dataset below to see its full schema.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| location_id | STRING | Unique identifier of the location. |
| observation_start_date | DATE | Start of the observation period. |
| observation_end_date | DATE | End of the observation period. |
| day_of_week | INTEGER | Day of week of the observation. |
| day_of_week_name | STRING | Name of the day of week. |
| hour | INTEGER | Hour of the observation. |
| hour_name | STRING | Label for the hour. |
| occupancy | FLOAT | Relative busyness of the location at this day and hour, against its own peak. |