How wrong opening hours quietly drop you down the local pack

Google's “near me” results filter by open now by default. If your hours are missing for a given day — or marked “hours unknown” because you didn't set bank-holiday or special hours — Google quietly removes you from those results.

The owner never sees this. You don't get a warning. You just get fewer calls on bank holidays and a slow erosion of weekly visibility for the days where your hours are unclear.

1. 1Sign in at business.google.com
2. 2Open your profile → Edit profile → Hours
3. 3Set every day of the week explicitly — including days you're closed
4. 4Use 24-hour times in Google's picker for clarity
5. 5Save. Changes propagate to Maps within 24–48 hours

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have slightly different bank holiday calendars, but the eight you must always handle are:

• New Year's Day (1 January)
• Good Friday (variable, March/April)
• Easter Monday (variable, March/April — except Scotland)
• Early May bank holiday (first Monday in May)
• Spring bank holiday (last Monday in May)
• Summer bank holiday (last Monday in August — first Monday in Scotland)
• Christmas Day (25 December)
• Boxing Day (26 December)

For each, you need to either confirm regular hours apply or set special hours via the workflow below.

Special hours override your regular schedule for specific dates. This is what you use for bank holidays, half-day Wednesdays, summer schedules, Christmas closures, and any one-off variation.

1. 1In Edit profile → Hours → More hours or Special hours
2. 2Click Add special hours
3. 3Pick the date (Google pre-populates UK bank holidays as suggestions)
4. 4Set the hours for that date — or mark closed
5. 5Repeat for every bank holiday for the year ahead

Some UK businesses run irregular weekly patterns:

• Old-school barbers and butchers with a half-day Wednesday
• Beachside cafés with summer-only weekend opening
• Garden centres with longer hours in spring/summer
• Retail with late-night Thursdays or Sunday trading

For these, set the baseline schedule in regular hours, then use Special hours to override the exceptions. Google handles this fine — but you must explicitly tell it.

Two different concepts that owners confuse:

Temporarily closed

Use when you're shut for more than 2 weeks but plan to reopen — refit, holiday, illness, lockdown. Your profile stays live, search visibility is reduced but not destroyed, and customers see “Temporarily closed” on the listing.

Closed permanently

Only for businesses that have actually shut for good. Listing is archived. Don't use this for holidays or refits — recovery is slow.

Even with the best intentions, hours drift. The fix: a same-day-update reflex.

Google fact-checks “Open 24 hours” against user check-ins, Maps reports, and call patterns. If your profile is marked 24h but a customer arrives at 3 am to a closed door, they'll often report it. Three reports trigger an automatic review — and false 24h claims are explicit grounds for profile removal.

For genuine 24/7 services (locksmiths, emergency plumbers, certain GPs and pharmacies), set it confidently. For the rest, set actual hours — even if those hours are 5 am to 11 pm. Google ranks honest profiles better than aspirational ones.

Run the free Rank Meter scan — if your hours signal is flagged as “needs work” or “to verify”, you'll see exactly which days Google reads as ambiguous.

For trades that struggle to keep up with hours updates, our Profile Rebuild pack (£71) includes a full year of bank-holiday and special-hours setup — front-loaded so you can stop worrying about it.