They track everybody's location via phone, and then cross reference that data with their geographical data, and determine where everybody is shopping/eating at what time of the day
what program is requesting the location?
popular times for what? OP is so ambiguous
for local places.
like what? the internet traffic to the business's website?
did you know that under google's personal ads preferences, there's a button that lets you remove it because it knows too much about you.