Crucial to answer your phone during listed business hours on GBP?

[joedarragh]

I've heard some credible SEOs claim that business hours don't impact rankings, but my tests suggest otherwise. We recently started working with an interior designer who has business hours listed as 7 am to 7 pm, 7 days a week.

I conducted a search at 6 pm on a Sunday, a time when most interior designers are closed, and this client had an average local search grid ranking of 1.9 for the term "interior designers Westchester County NY."

However, when I ran the local search grid again on Tuesday around noon—a time when many other interior designers are open—their rankings dropped significantly.

It's important to note that this business is still building its online presence, and Westchester County, NY is a competitive market, so I wouldn't expect them to rank as highly as they did on Sunday. Therefore, the poor rankings during peak hours are not the primary concern here.

How critical is it to answer the phone (from SEO perspective) when you get click to call from GBP?

Has anyone studied the impact of having broader business hours on local rankings if the phone is answered less frequently?

I've noticed with Local Services Ads (LSA)—and others have confirmed (as seen in this video: https://youtu.be/6PpZx4YOPRY)—that quick responses to messages and phone calls lead to better ad performance. While I haven't specifically studied it, I have observed this trend. However, I haven't found substantial evidence to confirm that quickly answering phone calls directly from Google Business Profile (GBP) impacts rankings.

Any thoughts or insights?

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Thought I would throw my two cents worth as nobody has responded to your post .

The major difference between LSA calls and GBP generated calls is that LSA calls are very closely monitored while GBP calls are not. LSA calls are using a Google managed number and monitored through the entire call process, while GBP calls are more of a hand-off call, directly made by the consumer to the business. There simply isn't an effective or efficient way for Google to vet each and every GBP's operating hours. However, faking your hours would lead to a lack of trust with customers and have the opposite effect of losing business.

A business typically gets a big boost on the Local Pack, if people are searching and business is open when their competitors are not. However, that effect is dramatically reduced when the competitor's doors are open too. For the most part, the earlier opening hours help when the competitors are closed, we've anecdotally also seen that the GBP with earlier opening hours gets a visibility boost prior to actually opening. Sterling Sky was one of the first to report the impact of operating hours and the boost in visibility. I don't want to send you any dated info, so I'm tagging @JoyHawkins and @Colan Nielsen to hopefully chime in and provide feedback/links to their case studies. In case they don't, take a look at this article that is based on their findings.

We have one of our larger clients with numerous locations, doing some testing with opening some of their locations 30 minutes earlier than their competitors. The results have been promising in foot traffic and earlier appointment times. I'm looking forward to see if this results in an indirect ranking factor due to the higher engagement during their earlier opening hours, in improving their overall Local Pack placement throughout the day.

In your client's case, I would suggest looking at other factors as to why their Local Pack ranking is not as good as their competitors, when operating hours are not a factor.

Hope this is helpful!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hours are definitely a factor. Google even confirmed it: Google Just Confirmed the Openness Algorithm Update

To answer your question on answering the phone - it's a factor for local services ads for sure. For the local pack, I don't believe Google has any way to track this as you are not using a call tracking number that they have access to (unlike LSA)