Updating Your Business Hours in Google Maps During COVID-19

These are trying times, with many businesses about to be closed in the province of Ontario as of midnight tonight and those that are not closing, often working on reduced hours due to fewer shoppers. How to communicate this to prospective customers before they leave home to shop with you?

Many shoppers use Google Maps to find out a store’s hours (of course many don’t, so you’ll need to update your store hours at entrance doors as well).

Google My Business suggests one or more of the following tactics to update your hours in Google Maps:

1. Update your hours using the info menu
   • this updates your hours “permanently” or until you change them again
     • you cannot use the “set special hours” feature as that only applies to holidays that Google acknowledges and so far COVID-19 is not considered a holiday 🙂
       
2. Update your business description
   • the description is visible on mobile although it is questionable how many people read/notice this. Perhaps if you use UPPER CASE or some good spacing, you can draw attention to this.Unfortunately  you cannot  use  colours  or  bolding.

     

     

3. Create a Post. This one is tricky on mobile because you’d have to change to the “updates” menu – not sure how many people actually do this.
   • Edit – Google has made available a type of post specifically for COVID-19 updates. When you go to create a post, this will be available to you:
     
4. Last but not least Google suggests you ensure your phone number is up to date 🙂

Need help in making those changes?