Google+ Local Finally Supports Businesses Open 24 Hours

November 16, 2012

Google+ Local Finally Supports Businesses Open 24 Hours

Category: Google Places (Maps & Local) – Mike Blumenthal – 2:37 pm

Updated 5:00 pm

Eagle eyed Matt Gregory alerted me to the fact that the Google for Business Dashboard (and apparently the G+ Page for local as well) that a business can now indicate that they are open for 24 hours and it will display correctly on the G+ Local page. This is a feature that has long been requested in the forums.

To have your hours show as open 24 hours in either the Dashboard or the Plus Page management area indicate an opening and closing time of 12 a.m.

Google has yet to fully clarify who is eligible for using this feature and whether a physical presence is required. It would seem that brick and mortar shops that have a physical presence would clearly be eligible as would service area businesses that hide their address and make house calls 24 hours a day. Beyond that it gets murkier. Would a lawyer that has a call center answer for them qualify? Would a bricks and mortar shop that is willing to come in on an appointment basis if called?

I asked Google to clarify their policy as to who was eligible to use this 24 hour designation. Their response:

The hours on the listing need to be the hours that location is directly contactable–meaning if calls are routed to a call center after-hours, only the call center listing should be shown as open during those hours. If a service-area business located at the business owner’s residence is willing to receive calls and go to customers’ locations 24hours/day, it is welcome to list its hours as such.

Please consider leaving a comment as your input will help me (& everyone else) better understand and learn about local.

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4 Comments »

Finally! I used to have “close” the business for 30 minutes everyday since you could only choose open from12am and close at 11:30 PM.

Comment by Todd Bryson (9 comments) — November 16, 2012 @ 7:02 pm
Good news for Diners across the globe, especially New Jersey diners!!! Hope they all recover post Hurricane Anna and can handle the traffic at 3:00AM in the morning.

Comment by earlpearl (784 comments) — November 16, 2012 @ 8:53 pm
This has actually been active for a while I think – well the ability to select that particular hour grid. I’m in Canada, and one of our clients offers 24 hour emergency service and I had the hours set from 12:00am to 12:00am a few months ago however it still doesn’t display the business as ’24 hours’ like the picture

Comment by Andrew Forster (25 comments) — November 19, 2012 @ 12:51 pm
I can’t imagine anyone actually policing this eligibility “policy” – can you? If your business is paying a call center to answer your phone after hours, how different is that than when you pay your receptionist to answer the phone. Oh well, at least this is a step in the right direction.

Comment by Jeffrey (55 comments) — November 19, 2012 @ 4:08 pm