It's Tuesday, November 10. Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. That's 16 days. Set your holiday hours on your Google listing this week, because if you don't, a homeowner who searches your name can see "closed" or "hours might differ" on the exact day they need you, and they'll call the next listing instead of finding out.
Ten minutes of clicking fixes it. The rest of this post is the part nobody covers: what a wrong listing costs you, and the decisions you have to make before you touch a button.
The customer doesn't call to ask
Take a plumber in Fairfield. It's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. A water heater quit and the house is about to fill with relatives. The homeowner pulls up Google on their phone and sees three plumbers.
They don't read your website or your reviews yet. They look at the phone number and the little line under your name that says open or closed.
Closed gets skipped. Nobody calls a closed business to ask if it's really closed. They scroll to the next one, and the next one gets the $2,000 job. Fair or not, that is how a phone search works.
This is already happening to guys. Someone in a Local Search Forum thread around Veterans Day wrote that they saw a client's ad with "a drop down arrow saying 'Closed Today'". An ad. Money spent to put the business in front of a customer, and the first thing the customer reads is that it's shut.
I'm not going to tell you exactly how or when Google decides what to show. Nobody outside Google can. I can tell you what the person holding the phone sees, and what they do next.
What "hours might differ" tells a homeowner
Around holidays, listings sometimes carry a note that hours might differ. Read that like a homeowner with a dead furnace would.
It says neither "open" nor "closed." What it tells them is that this guy doesn't know his own schedule, or doesn't care enough to say. A shrug.
A shrug loses to a plumber whose listing says open until 8. You didn't lose on skill or price. You lost because somebody else answered a question you left blank.
Setting your holiday hours takes the shrug away. It replaces it with a plain answer, which is the whole job of a listing.
Do your own math on this
I'm not handing you a statistic, because I'd be making it up. Do the math with your numbers.
- Your average job: what a typical one pays you, not your best one.
- Holiday-week calls: look at last year's call log for Thanksgiving week and the two weeks around Christmas. Count them.
- Calls that came from Google: if you can't tell, your Google listing keeps its own call count. Use that.
- The loss: multiply the first by even a quarter of the third. Look at the number. Then remember setting hours costs nothing.
That number is yours, and it's worth more than any case study. If it's tiny, skip the rest. If it's not tiny, keep reading.
The clicks, short version
Google moves its buttons around every few months, so I'm keeping this general. If your screen doesn't match, hunt for the word "hours."
- Open your Google Business Profile while signed into the account that manages it. Searching your own business name while logged in usually gets you there.
- Choose Edit profile, then find the Hours section.
- Look for special hours or holiday hours. It's separate from your regular weekly hours, so you can set one date without touching the rest.
- Pick the date. Mark it closed, or enter the hours you'll really work.
- Save, then pull your listing up on your phone and look at it. Yes, the same phone you've been ignoring texts on.
That's the clicking. If you want the bigger picture of what the listing does for you, this is the Google Business Profile work I do.
Which days to set
Most guys set Thanksgiving and call it done. That's one day. This year's calendar:
- Thursday, November 26: Thanksgiving. Obvious.
- Friday, November 27: the day after. Plenty of crews take it. If you do, set it. If you don't, make sure you actually answer.
- Thursday, December 24 and Friday, December 25: Christmas Eve and Christmas. Christmas lands on a Friday, so it turns into a long weekend for you and for everybody searching.
- Thursday, December 31 and Friday, January 1: New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Same Friday pattern.
Because both Christmas and New Year's fall on a Friday this cycle, decide the weekends on purpose. If you're off Friday, are you really picking up Saturday? Don't leave Saturday to default. Set it.
Do all of them in one sitting. Right now, before the Thanksgiving rush makes you forget. Nobody ever looked back at December and thought, good thing I waited.
If you answer the phone on a holiday
This is the decision that matters most, and it's the one the how-to articles skip. You've got three real options.
- Closed, and the phone's off. Mark it closed. Done. Say it in your voicemail greeting so the caller knows when you're back.
- Open for emergencies only. A listing that says closed scares off the guy with the flooded basement, who is exactly the customer you wanted. Hours alone can't say "emergencies only," so say it in a Google post, in your voicemail greeting, and on your website. Decide what counts as an emergency before somebody calls at dinner. Write the rule down once, so every call is one decision instead of a new argument.
- Open, for real. If you'll take calls, mark the hours open and mean it.
Whatever you pick, don't lie in either direction. Marking yourself open on Thanksgiving and letting the phone ring is worse than closed. A closed listing loses one call. An open listing nobody answers loses the call and can earn you a review that says nobody picked up.
And if you do take emergencies, your holiday rate is your business. Tell the caller up front. Surprise is what turns a holiday call into a bad review.
Make the other places match
A listing that says closed while your website says "Call anytime" is worse than either one alone. The customer sees two answers and trusts neither.
Check these before the holiday week starts:
- Voicemail greeting: say the dates you're out and when you're back. Mention your text number if you take texts.
- Website: a one-line note near the phone number. "Closed Thursday and Friday. Back Monday at 7." Plain.
- A Google post: the same line, posted to your listing. If you're posting already, this takes two minutes. If you're not, my weekly Google post routine is the place to start.
- Facebook: if your business page lists hours, change them there too. One more spot for a customer to find a stale answer.
Look at it like a customer would
After you save, do the one test that counts. Pull up your listing on your phone, the way a homeowner would, and look at the holiday dates. Does it say what you meant?
Then ask your spouse or a friend to look. Fresh eyes catch a wrong date fast. Setting Thanksgiving for the wrong Thursday is an easy mistake and an annoying one to find out about on the day.
Put a reminder in your phone for the Monday after each holiday. Special hours are set by date, so they should drop off on their own. Look anyway. A listing still showing closed on a normal Tuesday costs you calls for no reason, and you'll never hear about it from the people who skipped you.
None of this is hard. It's a one-time sit-down, and it's the kind of job that never makes the list until it's on fire. You're 16 days out. That's about when it catches fire.
Rather skip the clicking? send me your business name and I'll set your holiday hours, check the rest of your listing, and tell you straight what I find. You stay under the sink, and nobody has to eat cold turkey while the phone rings.