Google My Business: Is It Really So Hard to Specify Holiday Opening Hours Correctly?

“The opening hours may vary.” This notice can be seen over the holidays in almost every search for a local business like my standard supermarket, bakeries, and even government offices. And I always wonder: is it too much to ask to take a few minutes to update the holiday opening hours of one’s business? One of the major regional bakery chains topped it off at the beginning of this year. They managed to give different opening hours for New Year’s Day on Google My Business, their own website, and the sign on their front door. Such situations are likely to occur again during the upcoming holidays. Of course, I know that the tax office responsible for me is closed on Easter Monday regardless of the times displayed on Google. But you cannot assume that all taxpayers are familiar with all the Easter holidays. Updating these special opening hours is very easy and can be done without changing the standard opening hours in the Google My Business profile. Google calls these “Special Hours.” And for those who have more than one location, there are two ways to save time.  

Special Hours in Google My Business – Five Minutes for More Customer Satisfaction

The effort is really manageable, and the positive effect on customer satisfaction is many times higher. You just need to click on “Info” within Google My Business and then add „Add special hours“:   Google My Business even automatically suggests known holidays in the window that opens. You only need to click on “Apply” or switch the slider to “Open” and enter the appropriate times.   Then the profile will show the following:   “Pending” means that Google takes up to three days to review the change “before publishing it, if necessary, to ensure quality. This can take up to three days.” More about this can be found in the Google My Business Help under „What happens with your changes“.  

Edit Multiple Locations at Once with Bulk Upload

The employee responsible for Google My Business at a larger bakery chain with multiple locations will rightly wonder if they now have to click through the profiles of all the branches individually. Of course, this is not necessary. Firstly, there is the option to submit the special hours via bulk upload within a spreadsheet. I have summarized a lot of useful information about this in this article: Manage Locations Correctly with Google My Business Bulk Upload. The special hours must be correctly formatted in this spreadsheet. In the 24-hour format common to us, it looks like this: YYYY-MM-DD: hh:mm-hh. If the location is completely closed, an “x” is used instead of the time. Multiple days are separated by a comma. So, to transmit times like in the screenshot above for the turn of the year via bulk upload, the baker’s spreadsheet would have to contain the following: 2018-12-31: 09:00-15:00, 2019-01-01: x  

Edit Multiple Locations at Once Without Bulk Upload

If you cannot use bulk upload or find formatting the spreadsheet too tedious, you can mark up to 100 locations and edit them simultaneously. Simply click the top box on the overview of all locations, and all locations will be selected. Individual locations can also be deselected:

Am oberen Rand des Fensters öffnet sich anschließend ein grauer Balken. Hier auf das Bleistift-Symbol klicken: A gray bar will then open at the top of the window. Click the pencil icon here: Edit multiple locations in Google My Business The first location from the list will open. Adjust the special hours as described above, but do not forget to check the box at the bottom left before clicking “Apply.” Otherwise, the changes will not be applied:  

Benefits for Local SEO

Customers who are happier because they do not stand in front of closed doors due to incorrect opening hours are one advantage of maintaining holiday opening hours on Google My Business. But Google also rates complete and well-maintained Google My Business profiles positively and includes this in its ranking calculation for local search results. Local SEO will continue to play a major role for Google in 2019 according to many experts. So why waste potential that is so easy to tap into? If you need help setting up and maintaining your Google My Business profile, feel free to contact us at info@adojo.de or +49 911 24 030 050.