Running a business can be tough, especially if you’re a small one. Not only do you have to worry about marketing, staffing, and supplies—you also have to keep track of your hours. If you’re like me, it’s easy to forget when your business is open and closed during the week. Luckily, there are some things you can do to prevent problems with your Google My Business listing’s hours of operation:
Google’s underlying algorithm will show your business open if any of your verified business listings reflect that you’re open at a particular time.
Google’s underlying algorithm will show your business open if any of your verified business listings reflect that you’re open at a particular time. So, if you have a verified listing (with all of the correct hours), Google will assume you’re open at those hours and do so accordingly in search results.
If there isn’t a verification with matching hours attached to the business address, then Google can only take into account what is reflected within the local pack data (i.e., whether or not that listing has any opening times listed).
Keep your hours up-to-date, even if you’re closed.
- Keep your hours up-to-date, even if you’re closed.
- If you’ve been lagging on keeping your hours up to date and need to make some changes, do it now! The sooner the better. You can always update them later, but don’t leave outdated or inaccurate information floating around for people to see and use as a guide for their future visits.
- Make sure your hours are correct for every location (if applicable). This will help ensure that when someone searches Google Maps or My Business for one of your locations, they get a consistent experience across all locations instead of having some listings show incorrect hours while others show accurate ones; it’s confusing and unprofessional.
Limit how you use unverified entries for changing your hours on holidays and for special events.
Limit how you use unverified entries for changing your hours on holidays and for special events.
If you’re using unverified entries to change your hours, make sure you are using them correctly. If there is a holiday or special event coming up, verify changes in advance by going to the “Location details” of your Google My Business page. In the drop-down menu, select “Manage this location.” Then, click on “Edit address” at the top right corner of your screen and select “Paste edited address into the box below.” The next step is important: do not paste all of this information into a comment box, because it will create inaccurate data for Google Maps users who visit that business during that time frame. Instead, save this information as another verified entry so it will appear on Google Maps alongside its regular operating hours throughout that day’s window of business activity — even if those extra hours fall outside of normal operating hours (i.e., from 8 am to 5 pm).
Double-check your listings with listing aggregators so that the information is accurate everywhere.
Listing aggregators are websites that collect and display information from multiple sources. They’re not controlled by Google, so they can display inaccurate information.
If you want to check if your hours are correct, you can use listing aggregators like Yelp and Foursquare to see if the hours listed on these sites match the hours shown on your Google My Business page. This can help you figure out where the issue lies, whether it’s with your listings or with Google itself.
Maintenance can cause problems.
- If you’re updating your hours of operation, make sure that the maintenance is finished before you do.
- If you’re updating your hours of operation, make sure that you have a backup plan in case something goes wrong.
Your online hours of operation may not always be correct, but there are some things you can do to fix them.
Google’s underlying algorithm will show your business open if any of your verified business listings reflect that you’re open at a particular time. For example, if you have a listing for “Southern Fried Chicken” that shows an opening time of 3 pm on Tuesdays, then Google may show Southern Fried Chicken as being open all day long and not be able to distinguish between what days it is or isn’t opened.
If you are closed, then make sure to keep this information up-to-date in order to prevent confusion with consumers who may think they can come into the store when they’re actually closed.
Conclusion
The most important thing is to stay on top of your listings. If you’re having problems with hours of operation, double-check that you have the right information in each listing, especially if there are multiple locations or areas where your business operates at different hours. We hope these tips helped clear things up for you!