Opening hours

[blainep]

A client has decided to set opening hours to 24x7 for each location listing - so that the location never shows "closed". However, the location does run fairly regular hours. Do you think there is any negative ranking effect from this?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

What will likely happen is that Google will keep auto-updating the hours back to what they should be.

Why would they want the business to show that they are open when they are closed? Sounds like a recipe for a horrible customer experience.

 

[James Watt]

There's definitely negative ranking effects that I've seen from mismatched hours across citations and the website. Not as important as NAP integrity maybe, but if you intend to have your real hours listed on the website and anywhere else, don't screw around with having fake hours on Google.

If you do intend to have fake hours listed literally everywhere around the local ecosystem, make sure you're a service area business. Bad enough to have your business owner potentially picking up the phone at 2am, it's much worse to annoy a customer with showing up to a closed location.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I 100% agree with Colan. It will never stick and will annoy customers.

 

[advicelocal]

Don't confuse search engines with inconsistent data. This can only hurt the business and local placement in search.

Plus, if the business starts having customers try to reach them during hours they are really closed, it could lead to bad reviews which will also have a negative impact on search placement.