Holiday Hours: The Mistake That Tanks Your Listing
Updated on 3 September 2026
A business closed on a holiday with no listing update sends customers over for nothing — one of the most common causes of avoidable negative reviews. Google offers a "special hours" field separate from regular hours, specifically for these cases.
Why this is a recurring problem
A Google Business Profile's regular hours run on a fixed weekly cycle. A holiday falling on a normally open day isn't automatically detected by Google — it's on you to flag it manually via special hours. Without that action, the listing keeps showing "open" according to the regular cycle.
Concrete consequence: a customer drives over trusting that the listing says "open", finds the door locked, and leaves a negative review — often immediate and frustrated in tone, exactly the kind of review that's most visible and most damaging.
How to set special hours
In the hours section of Google Business Profile, a separate field lets you add hours specific to a given date, different from regular hours — fully closed, or reduced hours. This should be set up in advance, ideally as soon as the date is known rather than at the last minute.
The holiday calendar to plan around
In the US, the main holidays to check each year: New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day — plus any local or regional observances relevant to your area. Many restaurants run different hours on these days (closed, or conversely a special opening for some, like New Year's Eve).
A recurring reminder rather than a one-off check
The real risk isn't forgetting once, but forgetting repeatedly for lack of a process. A quarterly reminder to check upcoming dates (holidays, vacations, annual closures) prevents avoidable negative reviews from piling up over time.
For the full listing checklist, see Google Business Profile: 16 optimizations.
SEOresto alerts you ahead of holidays so nothing slips through. From €39/month. See pricing.
Author: Dmitrii Portnov, founder of SEOresto.
