Setting Holiday Hours on Google Before Thanksgiving Rush Catches You Out

Short answer: use special hours for one-off dates like Thanksgiving, Independence Day or a staff training day, and keep regular hours describing your normal week. Set special hours weeks ahead so anyone checking your profile before Labor Day weekend sees the correct answer, not last year's schedule.

An out-of-date holiday hour is one of the fastest ways to lose a customer's trust: they drive over, find the door locked, and the review that follows mentions it specifically.

Regular hours vs holiday hours

• Regular hours describe your normal week. Update them only when your normal pattern actually changes.
• Holiday hours (Google calls these "special hours") override your regular hours for specific dates — Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Independence Day, Christmas and New Year's.
• Temporarily closed is a separate status for a longer closure. Use it only when the business is genuinely closed for an extended period.

How to set them

1. Open your Business Profile and go to edit hours.
2. Find Special hours and add the date.
3. Enter the hours for that date, or mark it closed.
4. Save, then check the profile on your phone the way a customer would.

A yearly holiday calendar for US businesses

Put these on your calendar at least four weeks ahead:

• New Year's Day
• Memorial Day (last Monday in May)
• Independence Day (July 4)
• Labor Day (first Monday in September)
• Thanksgiving Day and the Friday after
• Christmas Eve through New Year's period
• Any local events, like a downtown festival in Austin or a marathon in Chicago, that change your hours for a day

Federal holiday dates are published on USA.gov if you need to confirm the exact date for a given year.

Checklist

• Special hours added for every closure in the next three months
• Regular hours still accurate for a normal week
• Website and phone message match what's on the profile
• A post published if the change is significant to customers

Where Local SEO AI helps

The business profile workspace keeps your hours alongside your other details, and reports & actions lists upcoming checks so holiday hours become a task on a list rather than something you have to remember. Pair the change with a short update using the post calendar. Updates to Google require the live connection, which is awaiting Google's approval; Local SEO AI is software you use to prepare and review changes. See our guide for managing multiple locations if you run branches across states, and check pricing, billed in GBP (£).