Today we are going to talk about how to set special holiday hours in Google My Business, Yelp, and Bing.
Why is it important for you to set holiday hours online?
Earlier this year, BrightLocal did a report asking people about what issues would make them lost trust in a business when searching online. Over 50% of the respondents said that incorrect business hours would make them lose trust. This is why it’s important to keep your business hours updated in all of the major search engines.
How to Post your Holiday Hours on Google My Business
First go to Google My Business log in, the Info section, and scroll down to see your normal business hours and your special hours. Please click the Edit button next to there and you can choose which days you are open, which days you’re closed, and if you have special hours on any of those days as well.
Now Google does a great job of actually prompting you to fill out your holiday hours on Google My Business. They’ll send you emails to remind you and when you log in they’ll even suggest certain days you might want to consider for holiday hours.
You can set them in the Google My Business app on Android or iPhone as well.
How to Post your Holiday Hours on Yelp
On Yelp, you will log into biz.yelp.com, go to Manage Your Listing, go to the Business Information section and scroll down to the hours. You’ll see that there is a normal business hours and your special hours. You can click on Add Special Hours.
Like Google, Yelp’s getting good. They’re predicting the days you may have special hours and you can verify them or you can enter your own days and hours right there. When you’re done, click Save and you can do it there.
You can also set your hours in the Yelp for Business app on iOS or Android.
How to Update Hours on Bing
In Bing, you can go into your listing on bingplaces.com and there’s a place to Edit Special Hours. Check the box that says, “Yes I want to provide working hours for special days”. You can see your close or you can actually put in special hours for that specific day. When you’re done click Submit. Now you cannot do that in the Bing Places app on iOS or Android yet, but I imagine they’ll add that feature down the road.
What About Facebook and Apple?
One more note … I want you to know about Facebook and Apple, two of the other big search engines out there.
On Facebook, they don’t yet have a special hours section. If you go to your page, go to Settings and click your page Info, you’ll see your hours. The week of, you may want to go in there and update your hours manually, but you’ll have to remember to set them and reset them afterwards.
The same thing applies to Apple. In Apple Maps Connect, you cannot set special hours, but you can go in and you can edit those hours. You can change your hours to your holiday hours, and then change them to the normal business hours.
So that’s it. That’s how you update your special holiday hours for your business in the major listings online.
