Just in time for the holiday season Google has made an enhancement to Google My Business to allow you to add alternate hours for special events.
These hours will then be displayed on your Maps listing on those dates.
If you do not provide special hours for a known holiday in your region – even if you update your regular hours – Google will add a disclaimer to let customers know that your “hours might differ” for that holiday.
Google hasn’t restricted this for known holidays and businesses have the ability to pre set special event opening hours up to a year in advance.
One current potential glitch in the Google UI is that this feature to add special hours only appears to be available when you access your Google My Business listings in the “List” view not “Card” view, however this may get ironed out fairly quickly.
Why should you care?
Many mobile searches are by people in the moment searching for products or services they need now or very soon.
Over the holiday period many businesses opening hours vary and if Google deems businesses that are open as more relevant to those searching you will have a greater likelihood of getting in front of them than businesses that are closed.
This could be a make or break factor in consumers deciding “in the moment” which store to go to or service provider to choose to get things done.
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Glenn is a Partner and Senior Consultant who has had a very successful career building growth companies in the private equity arena. He has a wealth of experience in both the digital space and strategy development. Prior to becoming a partner in SureFire Glenn built one of the largest digital teams in New Zealand for a NASDAQ listed global online marketing company & Google's largest premium partner.
