Why Accurate Business Hours on Google Can Make or Break Your Local SEO?

If your business relies on being found via Google Search or Maps, there’s one simple yet powerful detail that can make a huge difference: your working hours. For most business categories*, maintaining accurate, up-to-date hours is not just a matter of convenience – it’s a critical factor in gaining visibility and user trust.

Google relies on business hours to determine whether to include your listing in searches like “open now”, “open late”, or “open on Sundays”. When those hours are inaccurate or intentionally misleading, you risk creating friction in the customer journey and being excluded from these high-intent queries. The result? Missed opportunities, frustrated customers, user-reported errors, and negative reviews.

In this guide, we’ll explore how setting and maintaining accurate hours on your Google Business Profile supports both discoverability and customer experience.

*Note: Hotels are not permitted to list hours on Google. This guidance applies to all other business categories – from restaurants and retail to service providers and healthcare.

Main Hours: The Foundation of Your Google Page

Your primary hours communicate the core times your business is operational – whether for walk-ins, appointments, or service calls. In other words, this is your standard schedule during non-holiday periods. These are the hours Google uses to determine your eligibility for time-sensitive searches and visibility in features like the Local Pack and “Open Now” filters. If your profile doesn’t reflect your full operating window, Google may rank your listing lower during the hours you haven’t indicated it’s open.

Even if your hours are relatively consistent, they should be reviewed and updated regularly for automated or user-driven updates. Inaccurate operation times are among the most common complaints in reviews, and they directly impact customer trust and local rankings. 

How to Update Your Main Hours:

1. Open your GBP dashboard.
2. Select “Edit Profile”.
3. Navigate to the “Hours” section.
4. Choose “Open with main hours”, then enter your daily schedule.

Note: There are more options available on GBP (“Open with no main hours”; “Temporarily closed”; “Permanently closed”), and we’ll cover them in a separate post.

“More Hours”: An Underutilised Local SEO Advantage

The Google Business Profile includes a section labelled “More Hours”, designed to capture additional availability by service type. These are shown just underneath your primary set of hours, and there is a preview of certain categories in Local Pack results depending on the search query. Here’s an example from a business that shows in the Local Pack for Dinner options in Singapore:

Businesses can use this to indicate specific hours for:

– Delivery
– Takeaway
– Drive-through
– Kitchen
– Breakfast
– Brunch
– Lunch
– Dinner
– Happy hours
– Online services
– Senior hours
– Access hours (e.g., for storage units or gated facilities)

These distinctions provide Google with more precise context, ultimately increasing your relevance to certain services you offer.

Best Practice: Align these hours with your main services. For example, if your restaurant offers takeout until 9 PM but dine-in until 11 PM, you should clearly delineate those times within your Google Business Profile. The more accurately your listing reflects real-world operations, the more relevance you gain in contextually filtered searches.

Google continues to evolve in how it understands and represents local businesses, with a growing emphasis on context, clarity, and customer relevance. Your Google Business Profile is a front-facing brand asset with the power to convert first-time searchers into long-term customers. To stand out in increasingly competitive local results, businesses need to surface the most useful and actionable information the moment a user lands on their profile. It’s not just about visibility, it’s about setting clear expectations and showcasing what makes your business distinct. Features like “More Hours” are often overlooked, but are an important extension of your customer experience. Think of them as another layer of precision – an opportunity to communicate value and meet customer needs with greater clarity, right from the search results.

Midday Breaks and Split Shifts: Don’t Leave Gaps

For businesses that close during parts of the day – between lunch and dinner or delivery window, for example – or operate in shifts, Google allows options for split hours. This means you can input multiple time ranges within the same day (e.g., 11:00 AM–2:00 PM and 5:00 PM–9:00 PM on Tuesdays). In the “Hours” or “More Hours” section of your GBP, click the “+” icon to add another time slot for the same day.

Failing to reflect breaks accurately can frustrate customers who arrive during downtime, expecting service, often resulting in negative reviews or suggested edits to your listing.

Avoid Misleading Claims Like 24/7 Availability

It might be tempting to trick the system to gain extra visibility by falsely setting the business as open 24/7. While this might increase exposure in the short term, it often leads to long-term damage. Customers arriving to find a closed business late at night or on weekends are likely to leave negative reviews or flag your profile. Over time, Google’s algorithm will respond to this user feedback by decreasing your visibility.

Worse still, patterns of user feedback that contradict your stated hours could reduce your visibility in local search. Google’s algorithm is designed to reward businesses that provide accurate, trustworthy information.

Operational Best Practice: Regular Reviews

It’s advisable to review your business hours at least monthly, or whenever your operations shift due to staffing, seasonality, or service changes. If you offer specific services only on certain days or during particular hours, ensure those are represented using the appropriate “More Hours” categories.

Note: Special hours for holidays, closures, or temporary changes require a slightly different approach and will be covered in a future article focused on seasonal operations and holiday availability.

By treating your hours as an active component of your SEO strategy, you position your business to earn more visibility, fewer complaints, and greater trust.

Take a moment to review your profile. That small update could be the difference between showing up and missing out on your next customer.