Benefit to removing hours?

[Tony Wang]

Client currently has normal business hours listed on GMB, but she usually answers the phone outside those hours, has it forward to her cell. I've considered removing the hours because in the local pack, it says "Closed" and that might discourage calls. Just curious if anyone has tried that? And do you think removing hours would have any negative affect? The only thing I'm thinking is that it looks strange when everyone else has hours listed.

It's a private fitness gym, so you can just walk in, but obviously hardly anyone does that without an appointment.

Also, we run ads after hours, but the location extension sometimes shows "Closed" so I'd like to have that extension show, just not the hours.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Tony,

I wouldn't remove the hours altogether. Can you extend the hours by a few hours?

Is the gym open 24 hours by access card by any chance?

 

[Tony Wang]

Hi Colan, no 24 hour access. It's a personal trainer, they're by appointment only, so I guess technically I'm supposed to remove the hours anyway.

We just don't want to miss any foot traffic, which is admittedly quite rare. But I'm thinking it may be better to sacrifice potential foot traffic (don't show hours) rather than potential calls (hours show "closed").

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Is it against guidelines to put your hours if you're "by appointment only"? I would hope not.

I agree with Colan's initial assessment, I'd just extend it to the hours she wants to answer calls.

Will that work?

 

[Tony Wang]

@JoshuaMackens Didn't mean to say it's against guidelines to not show hours for "appointment only", but I remember someone recommending that somewhere. Maybe.

For extending hours, they close 8pm weekdays and 1pm Sat. She answers the phone till 10pm weekdays and most of the day Sat. So I guess we could extend hours to cover some of that.

But what would be the harm in not showing hours? Do you think people will assume it's closed?

 

[JoshuaMackens]

@JoshuaMackens Didn't mean to say it's against guidelines to not show hours for "appointment only", but I remember someone recommending that somewhere. Maybe.

For extending hours, they close 8pm weekdays and 1pm Sat. She answers the phone till 10pm weekdays and most of the day Sat. So I guess we could extend hours to cover some of that.

But what would be the harm in not showing hours? Do you think people will assume it's closed?

Sorry, the guidelines question was for Colan. He and Joy are experts are on the guidelines so I figured he would know the answer.

I also think that's a question for Colan since he brought it up. I'm guessing he is thinking not showing hours would not be helpful to users but could be totally off base on that.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

There's definitely no good solution to "by appointment" style businesses currently. And it's not against the guidelines to state hours on your listing if you're by appointment. But I've also recommended that businesses remove the hours all together as a workaround in the past. In certain situations I think that's a good solution.

In this specific situation I think I would probably remove the hours all together so that you don't appear closed when you are not. And you can utilize your business description and Google posts to communicate the finer details of how the appointments work.