Yelp is attempting to fix their lack of accurate hours by encouraging the input of special hours for Holidays.

Yelp, for all of their consumer strengths in reviews, has been woefully behind in getting accurate business hours from their restaurants. More than once I have selected a restaurant that was stated as opened in Yelp to learn that they were not. In the end I have resorted to finding a restaurant on Yelp and then double checking hours on Google.

Yelp is attempting to rectify this. In December, to little fanfare¹, they rolled out the ability to enter special hours. Today, with the coming of Memorial Day, they are sending out reminders to add them.

Setting Special Hours at Yelp is trivial and I would recommend any business that is active on Yelp to do so.

Whether this push will help them clean up the general decrepit state of hours at Yelp is not clear. I would be curious whether the condition of hours on Yelp reflects a lack of communication on the part of Yelp or perhaps a very real indication of the lack of business engagement with Yelp.

^{1 – When I say little fanfare, that might be an understatement. It wasn’t widely covered in the industry press. Since I don’t regularly read their blog I missed it.} 

^{2 – At least at the restaurants I have attempted to visit they have consistently let me down and I came away with the distinct feeling that I could not trust them.}