Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, more people check opening hours on their phone than at any other point in the year, and they check the map before they check your website. If Google says you are open on Thanksgiving morning and you are not, the customer who drove over does not blame Google. Setting holiday hours takes a few minutes per listing. Doing it before the week itself is the part most businesses miss.
The dates for this season
Christmas falling on a Friday makes 2026 a season of long weekends, and the days around each holiday are the ones that catch businesses out.
-
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. Most businesses close or open short, and Google usually suggests it as a holiday to confirm.
-
Black Friday
Black Friday is November 27, and Small Business Saturday is November 28. Neither is a public holiday, so Google will not prompt you, but a shop opening early or a trade taking the day off needs special hours for both.
-
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve is Thursday, December 24. It is not a federal holiday, and it is the day most businesses close early without telling the map.
-
Christmas Day
Christmas Day is Friday, December 25, followed by a Saturday and Sunday that many businesses treat as part of the break.
-
New Year’s Eve
New Year’s Eve is Thursday, December 31, and New Year’s Day is Friday, January 1, 2027. A bar open past midnight on the 31st needs two entries, explained below.
Hanukkah runs from the evening of December 4 to December 12 in 2026, and Kwanzaa from December 26 to January 1. If your hours change for either, those dates go in the same way: Google lets you add any date, not only the ones it suggests.
How to set special hours on Google
Google’s help page on special hours gives these steps for a Business Profile:
- Open your profile. Search for your business name on Google while signed in to the account that manages it, or open it in Google Maps, and choose Edit profile.
- Go to Hours. In the Business hours section, next to Special hours, select Edit.
- Pick the date. Select Review for a holiday Google suggests, or Add a date for one of your own, such as Black Friday or Christmas Eve.
- Set the hours. Leave Closed checked if you are shut. If you are open, uncheck it and enter the times. For a split day, such as a lunch and a dinner service, add a second set of hours.
- Save, and repeat for every date that differs from normal.
Four details from the same page change what you enter:
- Special hours only show if the profile is set to “Open with main hours”. A profile with no regular hours, or one marked as always open, will not display them.
- One set of hours cannot run past 24 hours. A bar open from 7pm on New Year’s Eve to 2am needs one entry ending at midnight on December 31 and a second starting at midnight on January 1. The second entry replaces that day’s regular hours, so add back any daytime hours you also keep.
- Confirm the holidays Google suggests, even when your hours are normal. Google asks for this so customers can see the hours have been checked. A plumber taking emergency calls on Thanksgiving should say so.
- Special hours cover up to six days in a row. Closed for seven days or more, or for an unknown period, and Google wants the profile marked “Temporarily closed” instead.
You can also enter special hours on a phone through the Google Maps app, and a business with many locations can upload them in the bulk spreadsheet’s Special hours column.
What happens if you do nothing
When a profile has no special hours for an upcoming holiday, Google may tell searchers the hours could differ that day, a warning that listing-management providers such as Yext describe appearing on Maps and Search in the days before the holiday. That warning is the mild outcome. The worse one is a profile that confidently shows your normal hours on a day you are closed.
Google also takes suggestions from the public. A customer who finds your door locked can suggest an edit to your hours, and Google may accept it. If you then reopen on your normal schedule, the map can be wrong in the other direction until you notice. Holiday hours that you set yourself, in advance, leave less room for that.
“Temporarily closed” does not switch itself back. Google’s help page says to use it for a closure of seven days or more, and the profile stays marked closed until you mark it open again. Put a reminder in your calendar for the morning you reopen, and check the profile from a phone that is not signed in to your account.
Apple Maps, Bing and Yelp
Every iPhone opens Apple Maps by default, and Yelp’s hours turn up in other apps that use its data. Each listing has its own place to enter holiday hours:
-
Apple Business
Apple Business (formerly Apple Business Connect) handles holidays under temporary hours, set by start and end date. Apple’s guide says holiday open hours “need to be different than your standard open hours”, and that the hours on your place card should, whenever possible, match the hours on your own website.
-
Bing Places
Bing Places, now at bing.com/forbusiness, has a special hours section where you choose a holiday or a date and set hours or Closed. Changes on Bing can take several days to appear, so enter them a week early.
-
Yelp
Yelp lets you add special hours, day by day, from the business information section of the Yelp for Business app or at biz.yelp.com. Yelp marks them as temporary rather than replacing your usual hours.
If you set up Google, Apple and Bing at the same time, as the guide to setting up a Google Business Profile suggests, you already know where each one keeps its hours. If you have never claimed the Apple or Bing listing, this week is a reasonable time to do it.
Your website, and everywhere else
The website is where a customer goes when the map looks doubtful, so it should agree with the map. The least it needs is one line near the top of the homepage and the contact page:
- Right “Thanksgiving: closed Thursday, November 26. Open 9am to 5pm Friday and Saturday. Christmas Eve: open until 2pm.”
- Not “Happy holidays! Hours may vary over the holiday season.”
The first answers the question someone is asking. The second sends them to the phone, and if the phone goes to voicemail they call the next business on the list. Take the line down when the season ends, because a banner still announcing Thanksgiving hours in February tells a visitor nobody looks after the site.
A site whose hours are marked up for search engines (in schema.org terms,
specialOpeningHoursSpecification) can carry holiday hours in that markup as well.
Google’s profile is still what decides what the map shows, so treat the markup as a
second source that should agree with it, not a replacement.
Then the places people forget:
- Your booking system. Block the dates, or a customer can book an appointment for Christmas Eve afternoon that nobody will be there for.
- Delivery and ordering apps. DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub each keep their own hours. A restaurant closed on Thanksgiving that leaves them open takes orders it cannot make.
- Your voicemail greeting. Record the dates you are closed and when you will call back. Example: “We are closed Thursday, November 26 and reopen Friday at 9am. For an emergency, call 555-0142.”
- Facebook, Instagram and Nextdoor. Facebook pages have their own hours field. A post is not a substitute for updating it.
- Your email signature and auto-reply. If you are away for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, say when replies resume.
A checklist with dates
Most of this can be done in one sitting in early November, and then checked twice.
- By Friday, November 13. Decide your hours for every day from November 26 to January 1, including Black Friday, Christmas Eve, the Saturday after Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Write them down once, in one document.
- By Thursday, November 19. Enter Thanksgiving week on Google, Apple, Bing and Yelp, add the website line, block the booking system and update the delivery apps. That gives slower listings a week to update.
- Monday, November 23. Search for your business on a phone that is not signed in and check what Google and Apple Maps show for Thursday and Friday.
- By Friday, December 11. Enter Christmas and New Year’s on every listing, with the same care for December 24, 26 and 31 as for the holidays themselves.
- Monday, December 21. Check again from a signed-out phone, and record the voicemail greeting.
- Monday, January 4, 2027. Take down the website line, switch off any “Temporarily closed” status, and restore the normal voicemail.
None of this changes where you rank. What it changes is whether the customer who finds you in December finds you open when the map says you are, which is the first thing a listing is for.
If you would like someone to check that your website and your listings say the same thing before the holidays, send us your address. We reply in writing with the three things we would change.
