Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Seasonal Setting Options for Google My Business
-
Hi there,
Not sure if anyone will have any insight but I have a seasonal business that I am closed for from September to March. I don't want to mark my business as "permanently closed" through Google My Business as I don't want my customers to think I've gone out of business. I've seen a few times through forums that you can change your business to temporarily closed, but I can't find the specifics on how to do this. Any insight, suggestion or resources would be great!
Thanks!
-
Here is the answer that I've received:
"Hi
At the moment the work round is to set as open for 1 minute at 2am on Monday morning.
It worked for a top contributor but not for Nathan who tried it.
I think it could be a bug affecting older GmB entries?
Its been known about for a long time.
Andrew."
-
Brick and mortar - I have a patio furniture store.
-
Thank you for documenting your experience, Matt. May I ask, is your business a service area business (like a plumber), or brick-and-mortar?
-
I actually ended up finding a link for Google Customer Service and got on a support call with a rep to review my situation. There was quite a bit of back and forth and proof required to show why I wanted "temporarily closed" vs. Closed and I needed to provide a 're-opening date' to achieve this. But I was able to achieve it.
The other thing to mention is that there are two ways you can be found on Google for Business listings: 1) via Google Maps Search (google.com/maps) and 2) Google Search.
For the Google Maps Search it is not possible (I confirmed with a Google specialist) to temporarily close a location via the Maps. Google Maps requires you to be open or closed.
For Google Search, once the seasonal location is ready to re-open you have to contact them again to have "Temporarily Closed" removed from your listing.
Hope this helps.
-
Hi Miriam,
I've posted on the GMB Forum and let you know if I've an answer.
-
Hi Jonathan,
I wonder if Matt ever posted to the GMB forum. This seems like a bug. I would recommend reporting and would be grateful if you'd let me know what you hear from the Gold Product Experts there.
-
Hi Miriam,
I've the same issue. It seems that you need 1 opening day. You can check the video in attach.
Regards,
Jonathan
-
Hmm, I wonder if there's a bug, Matt. How this should work is that you simply remove your open hours when you're not open and then put them back up again when you are. But you're encountering an error message? If that's right, I'd take this to the Google My Business forum: https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/Basics-for-Business-Owners/bd-p/Basics_for_Business_Owners
Do a search there first to see if anyone else is encountering a similar problem right now. If not, post your business details, explain exactly what you're trying to do and ask if you're dealing with a bug or are making a misstep somewhere along the way.
-
Thank you so much for the suggestion. The info you tried above was the first way I tried to mark as temporarily closed but as soon as I tried to close all the "regular" hours I got an "invalid or missing data error". Do you know if this only works if there are special hours set (i.e. for holidays?)
-
Hi Matt!
Glad you've asked, and you're right - you definitely don't want to mark your business as closed. Instructions for this are found in the Guidelines for Representing your Business on Google, which read:
Seasonal hours
If your business has seasonal hours, use the following guidelines:
- During the season in which you’re open, set hours that reflect the current season's opening hours. You may set special hours for holidays, temporary closures, or other events.
- When your business is out of season, remove all opening hours, so they appear as unset. Set your opening hours again at the beginning of your next open season.
Hope this helps and that you have a good open season!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Fighting spam on Google Maps
"Suggest an edit" on Google Maps works occasionally and so does Google's Redressal Form. Sending a DM to @GoogleMyBiz on Twitter does too. But it seems like the vast majority of spammy businesses that I report, go unnoticed by Google. I'd really appreciate hearing from some other SEOs on how they remove crap from the map, with better results. Thanks.
Local Listings | | Jason_Taylor0 -
Google My Business pages for New Construction Communities
I have a number of builders of new homes as clients. Typically, they build out a whole neighborhood at once and give the neighborhood a fancy name. We were planning to create Google My Business pages for these communities but then ran into some potential challenges. As new communities, they are sometimes not on Google's radar yet Some of them have model homes where you might take a tour with a realtor that serves the community exclusively but many don't. So here come the questions... Is there a way to make Google speed up its process of recognizing new addresses? I have to choose an address to associate with the GMB page, probably the address of model home. Is this going to create annoying problems for a buyer who someday buys that model home? Since some communities don't have a model home, I could arbitrarily assign an address of one of the neighborhood homes to the GMB page, but this leads to the same question about creating a GMB page that will exist after the builder has sold all the houses in the community. Will it be weird to have the GMB referring to someone's private residence down the road? My assumption is that claiming a GMB page would help with local ranking if someone searches for something like "new homes" in addition to providing easy driving directions to someone who has done a bit of research and Googles the name of the new home community while out driving and searching for homes. These seem to be the main benefits, but are the challenges associated with questions 1-3 even worth the trouble of trying to claim listings for these communities?
Local Listings | | TheKatzMeow0 -
Tracking Phone Numbers in Google My Business Listings and Beyond
Hey all, Wanted to run something by you. I am getting pressed to use tracking phone numbers for all of our GMB pages for over 100 locations across the country. Has anyone done this for their own listings or for their clients? Because I will have to do it for GMB, this means I will be sending these same phone numbers out to the other major directories and data sources around the web. The phone numbers do contain the local area code for each city and do directly connect our customers to their specific location without any kind of redirecting. How is Google looking at this? I have read before it is a no-no but have also read it is not a big deal. Any thoughts would be much appreciated! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree0 -
Disadvantages to Hiding Business Address on Google Places?
From a Local SEO standpoint, wouldn't hiding a business address on Google Places for Business create an SEO disadvantage in that I would expect in the local portion of the search results, there would be a bias to showing businesses that have not hidden their address as then you can place a pin on the map at the location? Or from a Local SEO standpoint does it not matter if you hide your address or not?
Local Listings | | Jazee1 -
Google Business - Adding location into business name
Hello, I've a client that has many services in different locations and addresses with the same website and phone number. But the thing is they want me to involve location name to business name. Is there a way to add and verify as bulk ?
Local Listings | | omeryamac0 -
Removing Unverified Listing From Google
We have an old unverified listing that has our information on it, but we can't get it off google. I told them months ago it was closed, and it is marked as closed in Google...but it still shows up. Moz Local is telling me this is an inconsistency that hurts our local rankings. I went to delete the page from our Google Business/Place, but if I did that, the warning said that I would just not have access to the page, and that the listing would still show up on google. How do I permanently get rid of those thing, so it's not longer an inconsistent listing? Ruben
Local Listings | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
My Evernote Notes showing up on Google Search page ?
I may just be living under a rock here in Reno, but tonight while doing a search (on desktop) for a phone number of a restaurant in Tahoe, Google served me a bunch of my Evernote notes along with my SERPS After the initial "WTFriday" moment, I realized that there was an "Evernote" bar above a series of images of what Google must think are related notes --- for example in a few weeks I am planning to take friends to Bliss & Rubicon - and I had saved the map in Evernote. Next to the map image were two notes related to daughters upcoming swim meet in South Tahoe. I did a similar search and this time a listing for hours at a local pool (near Tahoe) and two other documents came up. Since I live in Reno I thought it was odd to get all those Tahoe activities - but the fact that my Evernote on "Tahoe" things was there caught me off guard. The results were locate on the right hand where local business maps usually are -- the map and business info about the restaurant I was looking for appeared below that. ... while the left hand column features traditionals SERPs. . I am just trying to find out if I am late to the party on this ... or if serving data saved in my Evernote files is new... If anyone else has seen this, let me know. I could just be late to this. ...
Local Listings | | AJFanter0 -
What To Do With Two Business Having The Same Name?
Hi friends, We have a client who is in a peculiar predicament... essentially his business and his biggest competitor share the same name. Officially on their business licenses they are differentiated by the year they were each established, but in all their marketing, on their website, and in the community they are both known by the exact same name. When the company name is searched for, the competitor shows up #1 organically with the map pin as well as in the knowledge graph, and our site shows up number 2 without any any map pin or Google+ page site link or anything. We thought we could differentiate ourselves by changing his Google+ page name to his official business name (with the date) and building a bunch of really good citations with that official business name, but we still haven't made a dent for his branded keyword, and our Google+ page site links aren't even showing up. Has anyone run into a situation like this and any suggestions?
Local Listings | | localtrifecta_im0