by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, (August 18, 2017)

During the past month, searches in California for Taco Bell began climbing on Thursday, July 27 and peaked on Sunday, July 30 before taking a dive and then climbing past the month’s highs on August 6, according to Google Trends data.

Lyft partnered with Taco Bell to offer riders stops at the fast-food eatery, and PlaceIQ used its LandMark location data technology to analyze what influence the promotion had on boosting restaurant visits.

Drivers are paid by the mile, so when Taco Bell announced a campaign that would allow riders to push a button to have their ride take them to the fast-food eatery’s location, data became a major deal.

From July 27-July 29, Lyft users hailing a ride home between the hours of 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. were able to select a new in-app option called “Taco Mode” that included a stop by Taco Bell on the way to their destination.

“Taco Mode” was tested in California from July 27 through 29 and will expand into additional cities later this year. During the test period, PlaceIQ found the highest visitation spiked between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., when compared with the average of previous weekends.

During the 11 p.m. hour, Taco Bell saw an 8% increase in visitors when compared to the average of previous 11 p.m. weekend hours

PlaceIQ data suggests that during the weekend of the promotion, visitation to Taco Bells in the promotion area rose 3% during late night hours.

The analysis performed by PlaceIQ using its LandMark technology, a data-as-a-service offering that gives marketers and businesses direct access to PlaceIQ’s location dataset built on billions of location-enabled daily device movements.

For the dining category, some use cases for the tech include the ability to analyze changes in visits to competitors’ brick-and-mortar stores as they roll out new products or compare foot traffic to competitors’ during breakfast, lunch and dinner.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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