Google’s recent change to how it displays local search results – where almost every search result for home performance has been relegated to the local 3 stack – has had a big impact. As if it weren’t hard enough to rank, now we’re competing for only 3 spaces.


But in addition to that major change, some other changes have occurred. Among those is that your hours of operation are now much more prominently displayed in the search result. And, most importantly, if the person looking at your listing is doing so outside of your normal hours, they see a big, red, ugly, 'Closed Now' sign.




Why the ‘Closed Now’ sign?


If you’ve been diligent about your local search effort, you have already claimed your Google My Business page and entered in your business hours. Most companies are open 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, so what happens when a customer is using Google at 5:30 pm? As of August 7th, Google has taken to hanging the ‘Closed Now’ sign shamefully around the neck of businesses after hours. Ouch.


A five month study of a successful home performance companies phone data found that 13.2% of calls occur outside the hours of 8:00 am and 5:00pm, while an incredible 19.8% of calls occur outside the hours of 9:00 am and 5:00 pm. If you have made the mistake of opening at 9:00 am instead of 8:00 am, you could be missing out on major call volume.




The internet doesn’t take the weekend off.


During the same period 7.6% of calls came in on Saturday and Sunday. If your Google My Business listing is showing that you are closed on the weekend, you could be missing out on all those customers.




The key point here is that the hours your office is technically open are very often not the same as the hours you are available to be contacted.


Google has forced us to make a decision. Either display that you are open 24 hours a day or display that you are closed. But I can pretty close to guarantee that customer will not call if they see ‘Closed Now’ in big red letters.


How to be Open 24 Hours a Day on Google My Business


We at Energy Circle are strongly recommending that if you have an (see addendum)* answering machine at your business you should change your hours (if only in Google My Business) to be open 24 hours a day. Even if it means that customers need to leave a message after the beep, it is better than no call at all. Here are step by step instructions that will prevent your customers from looking for another business.


Setting your hours in Google My Business:


  • To set your hours, go into your Google+ Business page and edit your information.
  • Scroll to the ‘Hours Section’.
  • Click the ‘Edit’ pencil icon.
  • Select all the days ending in the letter ‘Y’.
  • Enter ‘12:00 am’ for both the opening and closing times.
  • Click ‘Save’.


*Addendum:


With deep appreciation for Mike Blumenthal’s (one of the country’s leading authorities on Local Search) comments below, it appears that an answering machine is not sufficient to support a 24 hour listing in Google My Business or, at best, is ambiguous. According to Google standards there must be “direct communication with someone at the location during listed open hours.” This could even mean that 24/7 off site phone services might be penalized. While we don’t see evidence that Google is enforcing this at a high level, it is still important to get this information right for your company.


If someone is answering your business's phone number 24/7 then it should be okay to maintain the 24 hour listing. If you are truly only answering the phone during business hours then we recommend extending those hours to at least 8:00 am - 6:00 pm, as a lot of valuable call volume occurs during those hours. (It goes without saying that the nuances of Google’s policy are extremely frustrating, particularly for the many companies in our industry that actually provide 24/7 service, but may do so via an answering machine or text alerts.)