Every year the same thing happens. A shop updates its holiday hours on the homepage banner, then a customer drives over on a closed afternoon because Google Maps still showed the old schedule. The fix is not complicated, but it does mean thinking about every place a customer might look.
1. Your Google Business Profile
For most local businesses this is the first place people see your hours, often before they ever reach your website. Google lets you add special hours for specific dates, so you can set Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day once and leave your regular schedule untouched.
2. Your website’s contact or location page
Put the holiday schedule as plain text on the page that already lists your address and phone number. A banner on the homepage is fine as a reminder, but text on the contact page is what search engines and screen readers pick up reliably.
3. Your footer
If your footer shows hours, it appears on every page. Either update it or add a short line such as “Holiday hours: see our contact page” so the footer never contradicts the schedule.
4. Social profiles and booking tools
Facebook, Instagram, Yelp and any online booking or ordering system usually keep their own copy of your hours. Booking tools matter most, because a customer who books a slot you are not open for has a real reason to be annoyed.
A simple routine
Make a short list of every place your hours live, put a reminder on your calendar two weeks before each holiday, and work through the list in one sitting. Then search for your business on your phone, the way a customer would, and confirm that every result agrees.
If you would like a second pair of eyes on your listings before the rush, the Fenway Web team is happy to take a look.
