Your Google Business Profile displays your opening hours to anyone who searches for your business or finds your listing in Maps. If those hours are wrong, customers call when you are unavailable, or stop trusting your listing entirely.
Hours are also a signal to Google that your profile is maintained and current. Stale, unchecked profiles rank below active ones.
Regular hours
Your regular hours are the standard working pattern you set on your profile. For most trade businesses this is a Monday to Friday window, with different hours or none on weekends.
Set them accurately to how you actually operate. If you do not take calls after 6pm, do not list yourself as available until 7pm. A customer who calls at 6:30pm and gets no answer will not assume you were busy. they will assume the listing is wrong and move on.
If your hours genuinely vary by season, update them at the start of each season.
Listings with accurate hours get 70% more visits
You can set special hours for bank holidays and seasonal changes
Special hours
Special hours allow you to override your regular hours on specific dates. Google prompts you to set these around public holidays, and acting on those prompts is worth doing.
If you are closed on a bank holiday but your regular hours say you open Monday to Friday, Google will display your listing as open that day. A customer who calls based on that information and hears nothing will move on to whoever is next on the list.
Set special hours for public holidays where your availability differs, for planned breaks and annual leave, and for any dates where you have extended availability.
This takes about two minutes per holiday period and prevents a predictable source of customer frustration.
Nothing frustrates a potential customer more than driving to a business that Google says is open, only to find the doors locked.
The temporarily closed option
If you are taking an extended break, illness, a holiday lasting more than a few days, or any planned closure, Google allows you to mark your listing as temporarily closed.
Your listing remains visible in search results, but your hours are replaced with a "Temporarily closed" label. This is preferable to leaving your regular hours showing when you cannot answer calls. When you resume trading, you can reverse this just as quickly.
Failing to update your hours for bank holidays can trigger a Google-suggested edit from the public, potentially changing your regular hours incorrectly.
User-suggested edits
Google allows members of the public to suggest edits to Business Profiles, including opening hours. If multiple users report that your listed hours appear to be wrong, Google may apply the suggested change. sometimes before you have reviewed it.
Checking your profile settings every few months catches any changes that were applied without your knowledge.
Google's holiday hour prompts
In the weeks leading up to public holidays, Google often sends prompts through the Business Profile dashboard asking you to confirm or update your hours. These notifications appear in the dashboard and sometimes by email.
Acting on them takes under two minutes and prevents your hours from displaying incorrectly during busy search periods.