Google My Business Listings Updates

Google My Business Listings

Google have announced that business owners can add ‘special hours’ to their local listing within ‘Google My Business’. This is ideal for Christmas when many businesses will have extended and shortened business hours across the festive period.

Not just for holiday periods, special hours can be set up to 365 days in advance for any circumstance. Simply provide the date and special hours and Google will display those instead of your standard opening hours. You won’t need to change them back – this will be automatically adjusted back to your standard hours.

Marissa Nordahl posted from Google: “The holiday season is fast approaching and with it customers looking for last minute gifts. They are wondering when they can visit your business and counting on your business information being correct on Google. When you provide special hours to Google My Business for a known holiday in your region, we’ll tell your customers that they’re seeing holiday-specific opening hours. If you do not provide special hours for a known holiday in your region – even if you update your regular hours – Google will add a disclaimer to let customers know that your “hours might differ” for that holiday.

Here are some screenshots of how this will look:

 

You can get a full guide on how to implement this feature directly from Google: https://support.google.com/business/answer/6303076

If you don’t already have a Google My Business listing, we highly recommend you set one up so that your business shows up across the Google platforms (Search, Maps and Google+). If you’d like any assistance with setting up a comprehensive online presence to make sure your business is seen, please give us a call!