Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. Christmas lands on a Friday. That is two long weekends and a New Year's stretch where your normal hours stop being true.
Here is how to set holiday hours on Google Business Profile, change them on your website, and make sure the two agree.
Why do wrong holiday hours cost you walk-in customers?
Because a customer who drives to a locked door does not blame Google. They blame you.
Wrong hours do two kinds of damage. The first is the wasted trip. The second is quieter: that person now has a reason to pick a competitor next time, and they will not tell you why.
If you run a shop, restaurant, salon, clinic or any place people visit in person, hours are the most checked fact about your business. People check them fast, on a phone, often while already in the car.
So the job is simple. Wherever a customer looks, they should see the same answer.
Where customers see your hours before they ever visit your site
Most never reach your website first. They see your hours in:
- Google Search, in the panel beside or above your results
- Google Maps, when they tap your pin
- The map pack, the three local results at the top of a search
- Apple Maps and Siri
- Bing and other search tools
- Facebook, Yelp and any directory you are listed on
Your website is one stop on that list, and often a later one. That is why the Google listing comes first in the work below, and why every other place has to follow it.
How to set special hours on your Google Business Profile
This takes about five minutes per holiday. Do it for all of them at once.
- Search for your business name while signed in to the Google account that manages the profile. Your profile appears with edit options.
- Choose to edit your profile, then open the business hours section.
- Look for the option to add special hours (Google may label it "Special hours" or "Holiday hours").
- Pick each date, then either mark it closed or enter the opening and closing times.
- Save, then view your listing as a customer would and confirm the dates show up.
Do not edit your regular weekly hours to cover a holiday. Special hours apply to one date and then fall away on their own. Changing the regular schedule means you must remember to change it back.
Open late or closing early on a single day? Use special hours for that too.
How to change the hours on your website without a rebuild
You should not need a developer to post a closure notice. If you do, that is a flaw in how the site was built.
Most sites give you one of two easy paths:
- A settings or footer field. Many site platforms keep hours in one editable spot. Change it there and it updates everywhere it appears.
- A notice banner. A short line at the top of every page, such as "Closed Thursday, November 26. Back Friday at 9," catches visitors on any page they land on.
Update the hours page, the contact page and the footer. Then update anything else that repeats them, like your homepage and any location page.
If your hours are buried in an image, a PDF or a block of text copied onto six pages, you have found the real problem. The next section is about fixing it.
Keep one source of truth so pages cannot disagree
The reason hours drift out of agreement is that they live in too many places. Someone updates the contact page and forgets the footer. Nobody touches the old PDF.
The fix is to store each business fact once and have every page read from it. We built exactly this for A New Leaf Painting, where every business fact on the site comes from a single source, so hundreds of pages cannot drift out of agreement. Hours are one more fact in that category.
You do not need hundreds of pages to benefit. Even a ten-page site is better off with:
- One place where hours are entered
- Footer, contact page and any hours widget all reading from it
- A single edit on the day you need a holiday change
When hours live in one spot, a holiday change is a two-minute job instead of a scavenger hunt. If your site cannot do that today, ask the person who maintains it to make it so. It is a small request.
Make hours one tap away, the way a busy restaurant does
A diner deciding where to eat on a phone wants hours and an address in seconds. Anything slower and they open a delivery app instead.
That is the lesson from Las Mas Mexican Kitchen in Wake Forest, where we put the menu, hours and location within one tap of every screen. People came for those three things, so we made them impossible to miss.
For the holidays, this matters twice over. A closure notice buried on an inner page is a closure notice nobody reads. Put the holiday hours where the hours already live, and make that spot easy to reach from any page.
What to do on other listings, Apple Maps and Bing included
Google is first, not last. Work through the others the same day:
- Apple Maps. Claim your listing through Apple's business tools and update hours there. iPhone users see this listing by default.
- Bing. Update your Bing Places listing. It also feeds other tools that people use to search.
- Facebook and Instagram. Edit hours on the page, and post the closure so followers see it.
- Yelp and industry directories. Update any listing you have claimed.
Some of these have a special hours feature and some only let you edit regular hours. Where only regular hours are available, add a note in the description or a post, and set a reminder to change it back.
Unclaimed listings are the ones to worry about. If you have never claimed one, it may show old hours you cannot fix. Claim it first.
How to word a closure or reduced-hours notice
Say the date, the change and when you are back. Skip the poetry.
- Closed: "Closed Thursday, November 26 for Thanksgiving. Open again Friday at 9 a.m."
- Reduced hours: "Thursday, December 24: open 9 a.m. to 2 p.m."
- Orders or appointments: "Last day to book before the holiday is Tuesday, November 24."
Name the weekday along with the date. People read "Thursday" faster than "11/26."
If a customer might need you during the closure, say how to reach them or when you will reply. A closed sign with a plan beats a closed sign alone.
How to check everything the day before
Hours that are saved are not always hours that are live. Spend ten minutes the day before each holiday on this:
- Search your business name on your phone and read the hours panel.
- Open Google Maps and tap your pin.
- Open Apple Maps and do the same.
- Visit your website on a phone, not just a desktop, and look at the footer, contact page and any banner.
- Check your Facebook page.
Look for any place that disagrees with the others. Fix the odd one out, then check again. If you have a team, ask someone who did not make the edits to run the list. Fresh eyes catch what you stopped seeing.
Put a reminder on the calendar for next year
Do this now, while the work is fresh. Set two reminders for 2027: one in early November for Thanksgiving and December, and one in mid-December for New Year's Day and anything in January.
Add a short note to each one: where you log in, which listings you updated, and what you would do differently. Next year's version of you will be grateful.
If you want a second opinion on whether your listings and site agree, our SEO and analytics work covers local listings, and we are happy to take a look. Or start today with the quick check above. Pull up your business on your phone, read the hours aloud, and see if they match what you plan to be doing on the 26th.