Special hours are one-off opening times you add to a business listing for particular dates, such as a bank holiday, Christmas Eve or a day you close for a staff event. They override your normal weekly hours for those dates only, then the listing goes back to its usual schedule. On a Google Business Profile they sit under the hours section, separate from regular hours.
How special hours work
You pick a date, then mark it as closed or enter different opening and closing times. Google shows those hours in Search and Maps on that date, and people searching ahead of time can see them too. At the time of writing (October 2026), Google also prompts many profile owners to confirm their hours before major holidays. If you confirm without checking, it records your normal hours as correct for that day.
Apple Business Connect, which controls how you appear in Apple Maps and Siri, has its own special hours setting, and Bing Places lets you manage holiday hours for Bing and Microsoft’s maps. Check what each one offers at the time you update, because these tools change. None of them reads from the others, so a change made on Google does nothing for an iPhone user searching in Apple Maps.
The UK makes this fiddlier than it looks, because bank holidays differ between nations. England and Wales share one list. Scotland adds 2 January and St Andrew’s Day, has no Easter Monday holiday, and takes its summer bank holiday at the start of August rather than the end. Northern Ireland adds St Patrick’s Day and 12 July. Some Scottish towns also keep local holidays of their own. GOV.UK publishes the official dates for each nation.
Why it matters
Wrong hours cost more than a missed sale. Someone who drives to a closed shop on Easter Monday, or calls a clinic that the listing says is open, is unlikely to trust that listing again, and may say so in a review. Google also asks users whether a place was open when they visited, and conflicting answers can lead it to change or question your hours.
For businesses with branches in more than one nation, getting each location’s dates right sits alongside consistent name, address and phone details as basic listing accuracy: a Glasgow branch should not show the late August bank holiday that England takes.
Common mistakes
- Editing regular hours instead. Changing your normal Monday hours for a bank holiday means you must remember to change them back, and many people do not.
- Updating Google only. Apple Maps, Bing, your website and directory listings still show the old times.
- Using England’s dates everywhere. A business in Belfast or Edinburgh has different holidays.
- Confirming Google’s prompt on autopilot. It is a quick tap that can lock in the wrong hours.
- Leaving it to the day before. People plan ahead, especially around Christmas.
How to act on it
Once a year, take the GOV.UK bank holiday list for the nations where you trade and add special hours for every date on it, plus your Christmas and New Year plans. Do it on Google, Apple Business Connect and Bing Places in the same sitting. Then update the hours on your website’s contact page and in any structured data that carries them.
Set a calendar reminder a month before each holiday to check the listing again. If you manage several locations, a bulk update in Google’s tools saves time. If keeping listings accurate across platforms has become a chore, my Google Business Profile optimisation service covers hours, categories and the wider set-up. My local SEO checklist lists the other recurring checks.