X
    Categories: GoogleLocal

Google Local Results Include Holiday Hours Alert

If you searched for a business on Labor Day, you may have noticed that Google has begun adding an alert to their local knowledge panel alerts under the “hours” listing for businesses.

Google adds “Labour/Labor Day might affect these hours” to the local knowledge panel when people are searching for local businesses over a holiday weekend.

This notation would display not just on Labor Day itself (the first Monday in September) but during the weekend as well, as this showed up during a search on Sunday.

It also raises the question whether Google will begin giving local businesses an option to submit their holiday hours for inclusion into their Google My Business listing options.  But they would definitely need something other than a generic “holiday hours” option, since some businesses might be open for some holidays but not others.  For example, a business might be open for Labor Day, but not Christmas Day.

This is a nice addition to the search results, not just to alert people that the listed hours might not be accurate during holidays, but also to remind people that it is a holiday in some locations that they might not be aware of.

These alerts were displaying for both mobile and desktop results for local businesses.

Hopefully this is something that Google enhances to include a business-submitted holiday hours option… and if they do, it will have the added benefit of reminding businesses to login to their accounts to confirm their business information is accurate.

The following two tabs change content below.

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
Jennifer Slegg :Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.