Listing Your Google Business Profile Hours As Open 24/7 (Even When You’re Not)
We often get asked if it’s ok to list your Google Business Profile (GBP) hours as 24/7 if you aren’t physically open 24 hours/day. While we always recommend following the GBP guidelines and watching what Google does, we think it’s important to be aware of what’s going on in the real world and what the pros and cons are of engaging in any tactic you are considering.
Note: This article is about brick and mortar businesses. If you run a home-based business with no publicly listed address, you can change the hours on Google My Business (Now Google Business Profile) hours as 24 hours if you answer the phone and provide service 24 hours/day.
Something we see happening in several verticals, but mainly with law firms, is the use of 24 hours as the Google Business Profile hours. You might be asking “does Google maps call businesses to verify hours?” As of this last year, Google has started to ramp up the number of automated phone calls they make to businesses asking them to confirm their business hours. I have yet to hear a case where Google penalized a business for incorrectly listing their hours as 24 hours if they aren’t physically available 24/7 at the office. However, I have heard of a case where incorrect hours can prevent a bulk upload verification as well as preventing a business from being reinstated after a suspension unrelated to the hours.
We get a lot of questions at the Local Search Forum related to GBP hours. For example, on this thread, Jason asks:
I’ve seen a lot of plumbing companies list their Google My Business hours as 24/7. They technically have customer support answering the phones 24/7 The same holds true for personal injury lawyers. Yet their actual office is open 9 AM – 5 PM.
According to Google, it states the following for hours: “Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation.”
This seems like a bit of grey area as to whether a business is allowed to put 24/7 for their hours.
On this thread, Ashley asks:
I manage listings for some pest control companies and am unsure about how to represent the business hours. We only do service for a set number of hours per day, but we take calls 24/7. After hours, the calls go to a call center.
Managers of the businesses think we should be able to list our hours as 24/7, but is this misrepresenting fact?
Here’s what Google says about how you should list your business hours:
Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation. If applicable, you may use your current seasonal hours as your regular hours.
Reasons to List Business Hours as 24/7
Here is why law firms are choosing to list businesses of Google with hours set to 24 hours. When 5 pm rolls around it makes a huge difference in how you display in the local pack.
Also, potential customers can filter the search results by businesses that are “open now” or “open 24 hours”, which automatically removes you from the search results if you are currently closed.
So What?
As tempting as it may be to take advantage of the extra visibility, it’s important to consider the pros and cons to list businesses on Google as open 24 hours when you aren’t physically open 24 hours. Will doing so in and of itself lead to a suspension? Maybe. But unlikely. However, here are the pros and cons you need to consider.
Pros:
- Increased after-hours visibility
- Increased overall activity on your GBP profile
Cons:
- Bulk verification issues. You can’t get verified if you’re hours aren’t accurate
- GBP support won’t help you. If you have an issue that you need help with, GBP will likely make you correct the hours before they will help you
Have you ever considered changing your hours to 24 hours? Has a client ever asked about it? How did you handle it?
It would be nice to see Google start to do a random robo-call verification process on older GMB listings. Not only would it weed out fake listings and dead companies, but also test “24 hour” companies.
Also, I always wondered what happens if a competitor sees those hours and does the “suggest feedback” option on your GMB listing. Would this initiate Google to cross-check website hours and make sure they match your GMB data (and other listings)?
IMO, there are plenty of “data trust signals” online, but for now it seems like Google is not able to measure, or just doesn’t care.
Hey Kevin, yes I am surprised Google doesn’t consider this a higher priority from a data quality perspective.
Many customers of mine are apartment houses with the “apartment” category. As far as I know those are eligible for “Open 24/7”. But all the time I select that choice the algorythm immediately deletes those settings. Would that category be eligible – is that correct?
Hi Petra, I would base it on the hours of the onsite office at the apartment complex.
As an owner-operator business owner, I don’t pick up calls, while working on my own, and let such calls to go to voice mail. I call such voice messages later.
Given such a situation, is it okay to list my business hours as 9am to 5pm OR should I list my business hours, when I call such voice messages back?
Does Google call back to verify business hours listed on business profile? If they do, then what if their verification call goes to voice mail?
Thanks for your time!
I think 9-5 would probably make the most sense. I’m not sure if Google calls to verify hours but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
I have an entertainment center that does all of it’s business through online and phone bookings. If customers come to our location on Fridays or weekends, there’s a good chance someone will be there in person, but there’s no guarantee. We originally listed the hours we’re available for booking as our business hours, but Google wants only customer-facing hours, so I removed all our hours, which doesn’t seem accurate either because we ARE open for business and are available almost any time at short notice. Visits coming from our Google profile consequently dropped 50% since we removed our hours.
We DO have some regular drop-in hours on Saturdays where we are guaranteed to be open, but if I list just a 4 hour window a week as our hours, isn’t that worse than not listing any hours at all? My other concern is that if I put our “available” hours as our business hours, customers might show up and find a locked door, and I don’t want to o that to anybody either…
What do you recommend?
Hi Chuck, if this is a SAB I would list the hours as 24 hours. If this is a brick-and-mortar, I would list the hours open when someone is present at the office. You can also utilize “holiday hours” and “add more hours” options to get more granular.
Thanks for sharing such an interesting post. Yes, indeed, in many cases, visitors search for such businesses on Google, who are “open now” or “open 24/7” and for then if you really want to get displayed on google, your business should be enlisted as opened 24/7 hours.
We have a different dilemma distinguishing dance studio hours from office hours. We have six studios in four different neighborhoods and two offices that each handle some of the dance studios. Two neighborhood studios do not have an office, and hours differ between dance studios and offices. I wish GMB had a check box to distinguish what hours are being displayed or the ability to add a label.
Hi Steven, agreed! You can utilize the business description field to add details related to business and operational hours.
They do have different types of hours (like restaurants having takeout hours) but the main ones are the only ones that display prominently, unfortunately.