Google Business Profile Holiday Hours: How to Set Them (2026)

The most expensive customer you can lose is the one who drove across town on Christmas Eve because Google said you were open. Setting your Google Business Profile holiday hours takes about two minutes per holiday, and when we checked before Labor Day, five out of six profiles had skipped it.

What Happens If You Don't Set Holiday Hours

Google doesn't wait for you. Its holidays help page says that on the holidays it tracks, "a warning may appear on your Business Profile that tells users your business hours might differ."

Read that from the customer's side. They search for you on Thanksgiving morning, see your normal hours with a caution next to them, and have to guess. Some call. Others pick a competitor whose hours are confirmed.

And if you're actually closed, the profile keeps showing your regular hours. That's the version that ends in a wasted trip and a one-star review. We wrote a whole guide on replying to a review about wrong hours, and the cheapest fix in it is never needing the reply.

How Many Businesses Actually Do It

We checked our own data. Of 275 US Business Profiles connected to ReplyOnTheFly that publish regular hours, 43 had special hours set for Labor Day 2026 when we checked over the holiday weekend, September 4 to 7. That's 16%, about 1 in 6.

This isn't a random sample. These are businesses that already use a tool to manage their profile, and five out of six still went into the holiday unconfirmed.

The 2026 Holiday Dates Google Flags

Google publishes the exact dates its warning can appear, country by country. These are the remaining US dates on its list for this season, as of October 1, 2026:

Two things stand out. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are on the list, and those are days many small businesses close early. Black Friday is on it too, so confirm that day even if you open at your normal time.

Halloween is not on the list. If you close early for it, nothing on your profile hints at that unless you set it yourself.

Outside the US, the same page lists dates for more than 130 countries and regions, including Canada, the UK, and Australia. Check Google's full list for yours.

How to Set Holiday Hours on Google Business Profile, Step by Step

Google calls this feature special hours. Its help page describes the point of it in one line: you set them "so that your regular hours don't change."

On a computer or phone browser:

1. Go to your Business Profile. Search your business name on Google while signed in to the account that manages it.
2. Select Edit profile, then Hours.
3. Next to Special hours, select Edit. Google may show suggested dates here.
4. Pick the date. Select Review on a suggested date, or Add a date to enter your own.
5. Set the day's hours. Closed all day? Leave the Closed box checked. Open? Uncheck it and enter your opening and closing times.
6. Select Save, then repeat for the next holiday.

In the Google Maps app, tap Business at the bottom right, then Edit profile, and follow the same path from step 2.

If you close for lunch or run two shifts on the holiday, you can add a second set of hours for the same date. In the editor that option sits under More, then Add hours.

Google checks edits before they appear. Its editing guide says, "We review your changes before we update them live on your profile." That's one more reason to do this in October, not at 9pm on the night before.

Set Them Even When You're Open as Usual

This is the easy one to skip. If your hours on Veterans Day are your normal hours, it feels like there's nothing to do.

Google disagrees, in writing: "It's a good idea to confirm your hours for official holidays, even if they're the same as your regular hours. This makes it clear to customers that your special hours are accurate."

Confirming a normal day takes the same two minutes. Open the date, uncheck Closed, enter your usual hours, and save. Being open when competitors are closed is only an advantage if searchers can see it.

5 Mistakes That Keep Holiday Hours From Working

1. Editing your regular hours instead. Changing Thursday's hours to "Closed" for Thanksgiving week works until you forget to change it back. Then you're listed as closed every Thursday in December. Special hours expire on their own. Regular hours don't.

2. The profile isn't set to "Open with main hours." Google's note on this is easy to miss: "For special hours to show up on your Business Profile, set your business hours to 'Open with main hours.'" A profile set to open without main hours won't display them, no matter how carefully you entered the dates.

3. Using special hours for a long closure. Special hours are for short changes. Google says they fit when a business "remains closed for up to 6 days in a row." Closing for 7 or more days, or don't know when you'll reopen? Google's instruction is to mark the business as Temporarily closed.

4. Forgetting the days around the holiday. An early close on December 24 or a late opening on January 2 sends people to a locked door just like the holiday does. Enter every date that differs from a normal week.

5. Fixing Google and nothing else. If your website footer, your booking page, and your delivery apps still show normal hours, they contradict your profile. Conflicting sources are also one of the ways Google ends up changing your hours on its own.

Setting Holiday Hours for More Than One Location

Clicking through six dates is fine for one shop. For five locations it's thirty edits, and that's where holidays get missed.

Google's own answer is the bulk upload spreadsheet. It has a Special hours column, and each entry follows the format YYYY-MM-DD: HH:MM-HH:MM, with an x in place of the hours for a full-day closure. One warning from Google's instructions: if you include a column heading with nothing under it, "existing information for those columns will be erased." Upload only the store code and special hours columns.

The other route is to skip the editor. ReplyOnTheFly's Profile Assistant lets you set a whole season of holiday hours in one message. You type something like "closed Thanksgiving and Christmas, 9 to 2 on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, normal hours Black Friday." It fills in the real dates and shows you a before and after card to approve, and one request can apply to every active location.

It's built to stay out of trouble, too. The assistant never changes your business name, address, category, or phone number, because those are the edits that can send a profile back through verification.

When to Do It: A Simple Holiday Hours Routine

Three calendar reminders cover the year's hardest stretch:

• Early October. Decide your hours for every date in the table above and enter them all in one sitting.
• One week before each holiday. Search your business name and look at the profile the way a customer would. Plans change, and staff schedules change with them.
• First week of January. Glance at your regular hours to confirm nothing from the season stuck.

Then put the same hours everywhere else customers look: your website, your voicemail, your door. A Google post about your holiday schedule helps too, and it fits naturally into a month-by-month marketing calendar.

Holiday hours are one line on a longer checklist. For the rest of it, from categories to photos to reviews, see our Google Business Profile optimization guide, or get a quick read on where you stand with a free profile audit that scores your listing against 9 ranking factors.

The Takeaway

Setting Google Business Profile holiday hours is a two-minute job per date: Edit profile, Hours, Special hours, pick the day, save. Do it for every holiday on Google's list, including the ones where you're open as usual, and for the half days around them.

Do it in October while it's quiet. Then when someone searches for you on Thanksgiving morning, they get a confirmed answer, and you get the customer. If you'd rather type one message than click through every date, start free with ReplyOnTheFly and let the Profile Assistant handle the season.

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