Google My Business is getting a new feature that lets you pre-schedule specific hours for holidays or special events. Now that we’re into November, the feature couldn’t have come any sooner.
When a business provides special hours to Google My Business for a known holiday in their region, Google will tell customers they’re seeing holiday-specific opening hours. If you don’t 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 “hours might differ” for the holiday.
“The holiday season is fast approaching and with it customers looking for last minute gifts,” says Google’s Marissa Nordahl in the Google and Your Business Help Forum (via Rise Insight).”They are wondering when they can visit your business and counting on your business information being correct on Google.”
“Special Hours are not just for the holidays,” she says. “With Special Hours in Google My Business, merchants can pre-schedule exceptional hours up to 365 days in advance. This feature is particularly useful for special events where normal business hours do not apply. Simply use Google My Business to tell us the date with special hours, and we’ll display those instead of the regular business hours for that date. No need to return and reupload your hours, we’ll display your regular hours automatically after the date you specified for your special event.”
There’s a Google Help Center article about setting up special hours here. You can only use the feature if you’ve provided regular hours of course.
Images via Google