How to Update Your Google Business Profile Hours for Public Holidays

Why holiday hours matter more than your regular hours

Most of the time, a small gap between your listed hours and your actual hours goes unnoticed — a customer who arrives five minutes after close simply tries again the next day. Public holidays are different. They're exactly the days people are most likely to check Google before leaving the house, precisely because they assume your normal hours won't apply, and precisely the days you're most likely to be closed, open shorter, or running a different roster.

A wrong answer on a public holiday doesn't just cost you that visit. It's also the moment someone is most likely to leave a review saying so — 'drove here on Anzac Day and it was shut, Google said open' is a specific, credible-sounding complaint that sits on your profile indefinitely if you don't fix the underlying hours.

How to set special hours in your Business Profile

Google Business Profile has a dedicated field for this, separate from your regular weekly hours, so you don't have to remember to change anything back afterwards.

• Sign in to your Business Profile and go to the 'Hours' section of your dashboard (or the Google Business Profile app under 'Business info').
• Look for 'Special hours' — sometimes labelled 'Holiday hours' — below the standard weekly hours grid.
• Add the specific date, then either mark the business as closed for that day or enter the different opening and closing times you'll be running.
• Save. The special hours automatically apply only to that date and your regular weekly hours resume the day after, with nothing left for you to undo.

Set them ahead of time, not on the day

Google doesn't always surface hour changes to searchers instantly, and a customer planning a visit two days out is looking at whatever's currently listed. The safest habit is to enter special hours for the year's known public holidays — Australia Day, Easter (Good Friday through Easter Monday), Anzac Day, the Christmas–New Year stretch, and any state-specific dates that apply to you — as soon as you know your roster, rather than the morning of.

For the Christmas and New Year period specifically, most businesses have several consecutive irregular days: an early close on Christmas Eve, closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, reduced hours through the rest of the week, and possibly closed again for New Year's Day. Each date needs its own entry — there's no way to apply one rule across a date range in the special hours field.

One-off closures work the same way

Special hours aren't limited to gazetted public holidays. A single unplanned closure — a family emergency, a maintenance issue, a local event that's closed your street — uses exactly the same field. Add the date, mark it closed, and revert to nothing once it passes.

The main difference with an unplanned closure is timing: you often won't know until the morning of, or even after you'd normally have opened. Update it the moment you know, even if it's already technically that day — a same-day correction is still better than a customer finding out you're shut only after they've arrived.

A checklist you can reuse every year

Once you've done this for one holiday season, the same short routine works every year:

• At the start of the year, list every public holiday relevant to your state and your industry.
• Confirm your actual roster for each date before entering anything — don't guess and fix it later.
• Enter special hours for all of them in one sitting, well ahead of the first one.
• Check your listing on the day of a major holiday (Christmas Day, Easter Sunday) to confirm it's showing what you expect — profiles occasionally take a little time to reflect a change.
• After the holiday period, glance back through your reviews for any 'wrong hours' complaints and correct the underlying issue if the same date catches you out again next year.