Google called client to verify office hours?

[Chris Ratchford]

I just spoke with a client who said she received a call from someone at Google.

The person calling wanted to verify the office hours and business name.

Has anyone else heard of this????

At first I thought it was an unsolicited telemarketing trying to sell services. But the client said nothing like that happened. No sales. Just confirming hours and name.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Very interesting. I've haven't heard this before.

So they asked for the hours AND business name?

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Yeah- my client said the main point of the call was to confirm hours.

I should mention that the client's hours are 7:40am - 5pm, which is listed on their website (in schema format- if that even matters).

When I claimed their G+L listing, I listed the hours as 8am - 5pm since 30 min increments are available. My thinking was that it would be safer to list 8am instead of 7:30am.

 

[Jan]

I had this a couple of weeks back. I thought at first it was a call because I'm a service area business, but I was specifically asked about my office hours.

I just said 10am - 6pm and didn't mention Saturdays. I was called just before I "closed" and the lady asked is this why she was able to contact me at this hour - it seemed very odd.

Some changes were made to my listing, I got a message on the G+ Page a few days later saying some changes had been rejected (no idea what they were, I didn't make the changes but my Saturday open hours have gone too). They also removed my links to other profiles.

I'm in the UK, the call was from a Dublin number.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Thanks Jan! Your situation sounds very similar to what my client said.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Chris, was it a Dental office? You only work with Dentists, right?

Because I've heard of them doing it for service area businesses as a way to confirm if you are really open for walk in traffic and someone is there during the hours you say.

But I don't see why Google would even waste all the man power to check on a Dentist's office hours.

 

[Flash]

It could just be the way to check on the validity of the listing overall. And if the quality team is used to asking about hours for SABs, and needs some way to open the conversation to check on a non-SAB, why not just go with the same script?

 

[Chris Ratchford]

@Linda- yes, this is a dentist.