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Google Business Profile

How do I fix my business hours on Google?

2 min read By Jeff Becraft Winchester, Kentucky

Step by step, free, from your phone: claim your Google Business Profile, fix your hours, set holiday hours, and stop the listings you never made from contradicting you.

Wrong hours online cost you twice. A customer who drives over and finds you closed blames you, not Google — and a customer who sees "closed" while you're standing there open just goes somewhere else, and you never know it happened. When I checked this county's restaurants, one downtown spot's own website said closed on a day the listing sites said open. Same day, two answers. That customer isn't gambling on it.

Here's the fix, start to finish, from your phone.

Step 1: find out who controls your listing

Search your business name on Google. If the panel on the right shows "Own this business?", nobody's claimed it — tap that and follow the steps (it's free; Google usually verifies you with a phone call, a text, or occasionally a postcard to the shop). If somebody claimed it years ago — an old employee, a marketing company you stopped using — Google has a request process to take ownership back, and it works; it just takes a few days.

Step 2: fix the regular hours

Once you're in, search your business name again and Google shows you edit buttons right in the search results. Set every day, including the ones you're closed — a blank Tuesday reads as "who knows" to a customer, not as "closed Tuesday."

Step 3: set holiday hours before the holiday

There's a separate spot for special hours — Labor Day, Thanksgiving, the day after Christmas when everybody guesses. Google nags customers with "hours might differ" warnings on holidays unless you've confirmed them. Thirty seconds per holiday, and you look like the one business in town that has it together.

Step 4: make your website agree

Whatever the listing says, your own site has to say the same thing, or you've built the contradiction yourself. If updating your site means calling somebody and waiting a week, that's a different problem — and worth fixing too.

Step 5: the listings you never made

Yelp, the yellow-pages sites, the little directories — many created a page for you years ago without asking. You don't have to chase all of them. Fix Google first (it's most of the traffic), then claim the ones customers actually mention. If a directory shows an old address or a dead number and won't let you fix it easily, most have a "suggest an edit" that works eventually.

None of this is exciting. It's also some of the cheapest money in local business — every bit of it is free, and the customer who finds accurate hours at 8pm on a Sunday is the one standing in your shop Monday morning.

Want a second pair of eyes on your own site or your Google listing? That's all the Blueprint Session is — thirty minutes, no charge, and I'll tell you the first thing I'd fix.

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The Blueprint Session

Let's spend thirty minutes on your business.

No pitch, no charge. I'll look at your site, your Google listing and what your competitors are doing, and tell you plainly what I'd fix first. If you can do it yourself, I'll show you how — and if you don't need me yet, I'll say so.

Not ready to talk to anybody? Fair. Text me your business name — (859) 749-9717 — and I'll text back one thing about how you show up online that's worth fixing. Free, no appointment, and I won't blow up your phone after.

Call (859) 749-9717 Message