Google My Business Enables Special Hours For Upcoming Holiday Hours

Google announced that now, business owners can add “special hours” to their local listings within their Google My Business listings.

Special hours let local businesses inform their customers about longer or shorter store hours based on the upcoming holidays, or even a special event the store may be holding. This is most important now for the upcoming holiday season, so Google is expected to launch it in early November.

Marissa Nordahl from Google wrote, “[T]he 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.” Now, if you add those special hours, Google will show the user the hours in your Google Maps listing, and if you do not add those hours, Google will add a disclaimer that the hours may be wrong. “Google will add a disclaimer to let customers know that your ‘hours might differ’ for that holiday,” Nordahl said.

Here is a screen shot of what special hours looks like:

Here is the disclaimer screen shot:

How Do You Set Special Hours For Your Business?

Google has posted a comprehensive help document giving you three methods. But each requires you to provide regular hours; without that, Google won’t let you set your special hours. The three methods include:

(A) Set special hours via spreadsheet.

(B) Set special hours online.

(C) Set hours that extend into the next day.