Fixing Missing or Wrong Hours on Google Maps

How Maps turns your hours into labels

You enter opening times in your Business Profile. Maps then works out, for the moment someone looks, what to say about you. That is why a small error produces a very visible result: a missing Sunday becomes "Closed" in large text on a Sunday morning.

The Open now filter matters most. When someone taps it, Maps shows only the places it believes are open at that moment. A listing with no hours for today, or with hours Maps is unsure about on a holiday, is less likely to appear in that filtered list. For many shops and trades, those filtered searches happen exactly when a customer is ready to leave the house.

The fix, step by step

Awkward schedules and how to enter them

Late nights that run past midnight

Enter the whole session against the day it starts. A bar open from 5pm on Saturday until 1am Sunday has Saturday hours of 17:00 to 01:00. If you enter Sunday as 00:00 to 01:00 as well, Maps may show odd short sessions. Check how the card reads at half past midnight after saving.

Split days

A café closed between lunch and evening service, or a surgery closed for lunch, adds two ranges to the same day. Customers see both ranges and the card shows "Opens" with the afternoon time during the gap.

Seasonal businesses

Garden centres, holiday parks and ice cream kiosks often change hours with the season. Set regular hours to the current season and use special hours for the transition dates, or update regular hours on the changeover day. Do not leave summer hours running into winter.

Appointment-only businesses

If customers can only visit by appointment, the hours should still say when you can be reached or when appointments run. Say "by appointment" in the description and add a booking link, but do not leave hours blank, because blank hours look like a closed or abandoned business.

A business inside another business

A post office counter in a shop, a pharmacy in a supermarket or a café in a garden centre may have its own listing with its own hours. Make sure each listing shows its own times, not the host building's times.

Bank holidays in different nations

England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different bank holidays. A business with branches across the UK needs special hours set per branch, not copied from one to all. The multi-location guide covers doing this at scale.

Matching hours on your website

Your website is one of the sources that can pull Maps hours back to the wrong times, so give it the same hours in visible text and, if you use it, structured data. Here is a correct set for a shop with a late Friday and a Sunday closure:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Store",
  "name": "Hollin Street Hardware",
  "url": "https://example.co.uk/",
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday"],
      "opens": "08:30",
      "closes": "17:30"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Friday",
      "opens": "08:30",
      "closes": "19:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "16:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "opens": "00:00",
      "closes": "00:00",
      "validFrom": "2026-12-25",
      "validThrough": "2026-12-26"
    }
  ]
}
</script>

Sunday is simply left out, which means closed. The final block marks Christmas and Boxing Day closed; opening and closing at 00:00 on a dated block is the documented way to say a day is closed. Remove dated blocks once they have passed. Structured data does not directly set your Maps hours, which always come from your profile, but agreement between sources helps.

Temporarily closed, permanently closed and moved

The status setting is blunter than hours, and customers treat it as final. A listing marked permanently closed will often be skipped entirely, and people may assume you have gone out of business.

• Temporarily closed. Use it for closures of more than a few days with no fixed return date, such as flood damage. Use special hours instead for a known short closure. Switch it back the day you reopen.
• Permanently closed. Only for a business that has stopped trading at that location. If it was set by mistake, change the status back to open in the profile, then check it has not also been changed on any other listing for your address.
• Moved. Moving premises is not a status change. Update the address and pin, or follow Google's process for relocations so the old address is marked as moved rather than closed. The pin guide covers getting the new location right.

Keeping hours right all year

• An annual special hours session. Early in the year, enter every bank holiday and known closure for the months ahead. Add Christmas hours by the autumn.
• One owner for hours. Name the person who changes hours everywhere, and give them the list of places hours appear.
• A trigger list. New staff rota, new season, refurbishment, staff shortage, bad weather: each should prompt a quick hours check.
• Read the notices. Treat any update from Google or the public as something to check within the week.
• Check on the day. On each bank holiday morning, look at the listing on a phone before opening.