Your Google profile before summer: what to check now

If your business gets busier in summer (a terrace, a guesthouse, an air-conditioning service, a bike rental), April is the month to get your Google profile in shape. Seasonal hours, special-hours days and new photos take an hour now. In July, you pay for that same hour in phone calls from customers who found the door locked.

Hours: regular, special or temporarily closed

Your Google profile has three kinds of hours, and each one has a job:

• Regular hours are your everyday schedule. If summer hours are different, change them at the start of the season, not on the first busy day.
• Special hours are for specific dates: holidays, events, a day you close early. Google recommends them for temporary changes or closures of up to 6 days in a row. It also suggests confirming holiday hours even when they're the same as usual, so people know they're accurate.
• Temporarily closed is for breaks of 7 days or more. If your business closes for the winter, mark it here instead of deleting your hours.

There's also more hours, for services with their own schedule: a kitchen that closes earlier than the bar, delivery, pickup. For a terrace, "kitchen until 10 p.m." is exactly the question you'd otherwise get on the phone.

One detail: special hours only show up if the profile is set to "Open with main hours."

Last year's photos

Old photos are the most common reason customers say "it looked different on Google." Before the season, take new ones: the terrace set up, the summer menu, the team, the street entrance (so people can spot it from the car).

Google asks for JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, recommends 720 × 720 pixels and accepts a minimum of 250 × 250. Photos should be in focus, well lit and show the place as it is, without major edits or heavy filters. That helps you too: customers arrive expecting what they'll actually find.

Description, categories, services

Google says local results depend mainly on three things: relevance (how well the profile matches what someone is searching for), distance and prominence. You can't control distance. You can control relevance: a complete profile with the right category, services listed one by one and a description that says what you do in your customers' words has a better chance of showing up for the right search.

If you add something for summer (a new terrace, delivery, equipment rental), put it in your services and description now. And check that it matches your website: hours, phone, address.

Google also says something worth knowing: there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Anyone promising that is selling you something else.

Reviews: reply now, not in August

Prominence also depends on reviews: how many you have and your rating. Google recommends replying to them because it shows you value customer feedback. Before the season, read the past year's reviews and answer the ones still without a reply, especially the negative ones. A calm reply with one concrete fact ("since then we've changed…") carries more weight than the star rating.

What not to do: don't buy reviews and don't write them yourself. We covered the EU rules in our article on fake reviews.

The one-hour checklist

If you'd like us to run the check with you or shoot the seasonal photos, our marketing services page shows what we do for local businesses.