How to Update Your Google My Business Hours During COVID-19

With many states forcing all but essential businesses to shut down, you may be wondering how to update your Google My Business hours to avoid confusion among customers. Below are three options that you can take when updating your business hours, whether you’re temporarily closing or adjusting your hours of operation.

Option One: Contact GMB Support For “Temporarily Closed” Label

Google recently released the option to mark your listing as temporarily closed. In order to do this, you must reach out to Google support.

Keep in mind, Google is currently short-staffed and it may take time for your request to take effect. You must also reach back out to Google support to reopen your GMB listing.

While this feature is enabled, your business won’t receive new reviews or may not display as prominently in the local finder. Read our latest article on updating your pin on Google Maps.

Option Two: Permanently Close Your Business

You won’t have to reach out to Google support to permanently close your business, but you won’t receive new reviews. I wouldn’t recommend this option, just to avoid customer confusion once the COVID-19 situation begins to improve.

Option Three: Set Holiday Hours

This is my recommended option. GMB allows you to display holiday hours for special hours, which is ideal for folks adjusting hours of operation, or closing temporarily, without relying on Google Support or signaling to customers that your business is permanently out of business. Alongside holiday hours, you can create a Google event post to display within your GMB knowledge panel to further explain the change in your hours.

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Other Options If You’re A Local Business

If your hours of operation aren’t changing, but you won’t be serving the public within your physical location, Google is now allowing certain businesses such as restaurants the option to add pick up, dine out or carry out to their business name. Google also recently launched new schema markup types for COVID-19 to help businesses better inform their customers, as well as a new tool to make COVID-19 special announcements without using structured data.

How To Mark Your Business As Temporarily Closed

To make your business profile appear as temporarily closed on Google Maps and Search, follow these steps:

• Sign in to Google My Business on desktop.
• In the menu on the left, click Info.
• To the right, point to the section “Close this business on Google.”
• Expand this section and click click “Mark as temporarily closed.”

How To Set Special Hours For Your GMB Listing

Here are the steps you need to take in order to enable special hours:

1. In your GMB Listing, click the Info tab and Special hours.
2. To choose a different date, click Add new date.
3. Enter the opening and closing times for that day. 
   • To mark the location as closed all day, slide the circle to “Closed.”
   • If you're open 24 hours, click Opens at, and from the drop down menu select 24 hours.
4. Apply your changes. Google will only show your special hours during the specific days that you set them.

How To Mark Your GMB Listing As Permanently Closed

Here are the steps you can take to display your GMB Listing as permanently closed:

1. In the GMB menu on the left, click Info
2. Click close or remove this listing
3. Mark the listing as permanently closed
4. Click the OK button

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Marking Google My Business Listing Hours As Temporarily Closed Impact Anything?

Google confirmed that marking a GMB Listing as temporarily closed won’t harm visibility or rankings.

Are there any long term ranking implications to using temporarily closed vs. special hours?

With the most recent Google update, there isn’t any impact to using temporarily closed vs. special hours.

Will marking my business as temporarily closed create a competitive disadvantage?

There is no impact on ranking. It’s recommended to keep your customers informed so they don’t show up at your physical location.

What should I be doing with posts to complement hour changes?

It’s recommended to utilize posts to communicate why hours have changed, or why your business has temporarily closed. You can also leverage GMB posts to explain to customers the steps you’re taking to keep employees and customers safe.

Looking for a tool to perform keyword research? Check out my latest article that walks you through the process of how to use SEMRush for keyword research when writing new content, or how to update old content for SEO.