Google My Business Update: Holiday Hours / Special Hours

[Linda Buquet]

Happy to announce and cool new Google My Business update
Just in time for the Holiday season!​

When your business has an irregular schedule, like holidays or special events, you can enter special hours in advance. If you schedule special hours for an official holiday, users will be told that those hours are scheduled specifically for that holiday. Open 8 - 12 Christmas Eve. Closed Christmas day.

I believe Google is the 1st mapping product to offer the option to add special hours/Holiday hours to business listings.

You can schedule the whole year out in advance if you want to. But days that don't have special hours will keep your normal hours.

The option is only available in GMBL. Which is "locations" or "list view". But now of course, even a single business can just go to list view to use features there any time.

Here are the official Google Help Docs that explain how to do it, based on where you are editing:

Here is Marissa's post at the Google Business Forum with more details:
<a href="https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/kHfoXPjkRzg">Special Hours in Google My Business - Google Product Forums</a>

Perfect timing!

 

[cdawg2610]

This is awesome news!!

 

[Dialady]

Great time saver getting to do it for the entire year!! This will work well for my doctor clients. Thanks so much Linda!!

 

[Caleb]

Is there a list somewhere for which US holidays Google is going to add the "hours may be different" message? I've uploaded hours for the typical holidays, but today, honoring our Veterans, I see the different hours message being displayed. I'd love to handle all the dates at once instead of on a discovery basis.

Thanks.

 

[cdawg2610]

Is there a list somewhere for which US holidays Google is going to add the "hours may be different" message? I've uploaded hours for the typical holidays, but today, honoring our Veterans, I see the different hours message being displayed. I'd love to handle all the dates at once instead of on a discovery basis.

Thanks.

Caleb - with the showing of Veterans day messages today, I would go with them going off of the postal calendar

https://about.usps.com/news/events-calendar/2015-postal-holidays.htm

I've done a lot of the updates for Thanksgiving hour, and I'm also noticing that Google's updating the hours rich answer in the search result when the question "Is XXX business open on thanksgiving" entered.

 

[Caleb]

Thanks for the info. I'll work off that until something more official comes along. Also, great observation on the rich answer. Those things are popping up all over the place. Eric Enge gave a great presentation on them at Pubcon. Might be on his blog too.

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

This is cool - haven't seen this before. Must be part of the holiday hours thingie (technical term). Might be what @caleb was talking about?
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Guessing which list Google will use per country is going to be nighmare-ish at the very least. That makes sense for the US to use that list. Here in Aus, holidays can differ on a state by state basis and that obviously impacts trading hours. Would be good to know if G is only going to cater for the biggies, the ones that are national (per country) or at a regional level, and if so, what's the source.
@caleb has asked a most excellent question - I vote Caleb wins the Internet today.

 

[Tony Wang]

Well, I hope it all works like it's supposed to. Yesterday (Veteran's Day) I saw a client's Ad, with Location Extension, and right next to the address a drop down arrow saying "Closed Today" Say What? We didn't make any changes to his regular hours.

I didn't have time to check with support to find out what was going on and figured it might be a glitch associated with the new "special hours" thing. I can imagine a lot of angry people if that happens to a retail store during the holidays.