Temporarily closed or reduced hours on Google

Two weeks ago this was a news story. Since the national emergency was declared and the stay-at-home orders started rolling out state by state, it has been the whole job. Most of the businesses we work with are either shut, running at a fraction of normal, or open for something much narrower than what their listing says they do.

Right now the listing is the fastest way to tell people what is true. It is also the thing most likely to still say something that was accurate three weeks ago. Google has changed several things about how listings work in the last fortnight, so here is what has moved and what we are doing with it this week.

What has changed on Google My Business

• A temporary closure status. You can mark a business temporarily closed without it looking abandoned or permanently gone.
• New reviews and review replies are paused. Reviews left now may not appear, and replies you write may not publish. Q&A is affected as well, so new answers may not show.
• A COVID-19 post type. A dedicated update that sits at the top of the profile for closures, hours and how to reach you.
• Slower edits and verifications. Google has said it is prioritising critical edits such as hours, closures and health information. Expect anything else to sit in a queue, and expect new listing verification to take much longer than usual.

The pause on reviews is the one that surprises owners most. Nothing is broken and nothing is lost. Google has reduced what is being processed while its own staffing is limited.

Temporarily closed is not the same as quiet

This is the decision we are walking every client through, and it comes down to one question. Can a customer get anything at all from you this week?

If the answer is yes, in any form, you are open. Phone advice, pickup, delivery, an emergency appointment, a virtual consultation, a deposit taken for work in a few months. Stay open on the listing and set hours that are actually true, even if that is 10 to 2 on three days. Marking yourself temporarily closed when the phone is still being answered sends the people who would have called somewhere else.

If the answer is no, and nothing is being answered at all, use temporarily closed. It keeps the listing intact for when you come back, and it stops people driving over to a locked door.

Two things not to do. Do not mark yourself permanently closed, whatever happens. That is very hard to undo and it tells Google to stop showing you. And do not simply delete your hours, because an empty hours field reads as uncertainty. Choose a status deliberately.

Where you already know the next few weeks are different, set special hours for those dates rather than rewriting the regular hours every Monday.

Plan around the paused reviews and Q&A

Reviews will come back. The work now is to not waste the goodwill in the meantime.

• Pause the automated review request going out to customers, because sending people to leave a review that will not appear looks broken.
• Keep a list of every customer who would have been asked, with a date, and ask them when reviews are processing normally again.
• Write your replies to recent reviews anyway and keep them in a document. Post them when replies publish again.
• If people are asking questions in Q&A and your answers are not appearing, put those answers in your business description and in a post instead. The question was real, so the answer needs somewhere to live.

What to publish on the listing this week

Keep it to four things, and keep the same four things on the phone greeting and the top of your website. One message in three places.

1. Status and hours. What you are open for and when, in plain words.
2. What you can still do. Emergency appointments, phone consultations, pickup, delivery, deposits, gift cards, quotes for later work. This is the part owners undersell.
3. How to reach you. One number that is answered. If the office phone forwards to a mobile, test it from another phone, today.
4. When you will next update. “We will update this listing on Monday” buys you patience.

For dental practices, which are most of who we work with, the listing should say what the guidance says: elective and routine care postponed, emergency care only, call before coming in. Spell out what counts as an emergency in the post, because the alternative is a patient in pain calling six practices or turning up at a hospital.

Facebook opened applications for small business grants last week. It takes ten minutes to look at and a lot of owners we have spoken to did not know it existed.

What we are telling clients

1. Decide your status this morning: open with real reduced hours, or temporarily closed. Not left as it was in February.
2. Publish a post that covers status, what you can still do, how to reach you and when you will update again.
3. Test your phone from outside the building, including after hours, and make sure it is answered or forwards.
4. Turn off automated review requests and keep a list of who to ask later.
5. Make the website say the same thing as the listing, above the fold, not on a news page nobody visits.
6. Diary a recheck for next Monday, because this is going to keep changing.

This is what our Google My Business work and the rest of our local search work is for this month. For dental practices in particular, a listing that clearly says emergency only protects the phone line and the patients who genuinely need it.