Source record
Local SEO performance depends on maintaining specific Google Business Profile fields, local signals, and location evidence over time.
do you know that your opening hours can impact your rankings on Google? Joy Hawkins published a really interesting study where she showed that this was the case. And I've verified this with my own research.
So yes, if you are closed and your competitors are open, they do tend to outrank you.
And this makes sense. Google wants to show users businesses that are open. So what's the takeaway here?
Should you change your business to 24 hours?
I wouldn't do that unless you have an answering service, someone's answering the phone, then you could maybe consider it. Uh, but I think a better move is to just consider extending your hours. If you keep your hours open a little bit longer, then at those transition points at like five PM or six PM when all the other businesses are closed, they'll drop and you'll stay.
So it's actually kind of a nice move to stay open for a little bit longer if you can make that work and you're still answering the phones.
Local SEO performance depends on maintaining specific Google Business Profile fields, local signals, and location evidence over time.
Audit GBP fields, posts, services, citations, opening hours, profile engagement signals, and local-ranking experiments before changing local SEO priorities.
This source is connected to Local SEO operations and Google Business Profile maintenance.
do you know that your opening hours can impact your rankings on Google?