Retail businesses affected by COVID-19 - Google Business Profile Help [gg-business-en]

Retail businesses affected by COVID-19

If your store operates differently than normal due to the COVID-19 situation, update your Business Profile on Google to provide the most accurate information to your customers. You can change your hours of operation or add in-store pickup or delivery-only attributes. The updates will show on your Business Profile on Google Search and Maps.

Important: We may review your changes for quality before we publish them, so the changes may delay the updates on Google Search and Maps.

Here are ways to make sure your customers have the latest information about your store:

1. Update your business hours

For businesses with changed hours: If your business hours have changed, update the times when you'll be open or closed. Your operating hours show when a customer visits your Business Profile, and they'll know exactly when they can visit your location. If your business is open and offers onsite services, use primary hours to refer to the hours you offer onsite services. Learn how to change your hours.

Tip: If you're closed for shopping in-store but offer pickup or delivery during reduced hours, make sure your hours of operation reflect the pickup or delivery hours. Update your delivery options.

For temporarily closed businesses: If your business is not permanently closed, but has temporarily stopped providing all services, mark your business "Temporarily closed." When your business fully or partially resumes operations, you can reopen your business.

For businesses with special hours: If your business is open but has adjusted operating hours for specific days, set special hours (rather than mark your business "Temporarily closed").  Learn how to set special hours.

For businesses with more hours: If your business provides specific services with differing times, like senior hours, delivery, and takeout, you can set More hours instead of Special hours. Learn how to set More hours.

2. Mark your store as temporarily closed

You can now mark your store as "Temporarily closed" if you don't offer in-store shopping, pickup, delivery, or curbside pickup. Google also relies on authoritative data sources, where available, to mark certain types of places as "Temporarily closed" on Google Search and Google Maps. Learn to mark your business as "Temporarily closed."

Marking a business as temporarily closed helps ensure that when customers search for a business by name, they'll find it and understand it's only closed temporarily. This may prevent cases where people visit a business in person and are disappointed to discover it's closed.

Businesses that are temporarily closed may rank after open businesses for broad queries. This ranking doesn't happen for more specific queries, including queries for a specific business, or for queries when many matching businesses are temporarily closed.

Important: Businesses offering pickup or delivery services should not mark the business "Temporarily closed," otherwise those services won't show on Google.

3. Manage your delivery options

Let your customers know whether your store:

• Offers pickup, delivery, curbside pickup, or in-store shopping 
• Is not open for in-store shopping

Add or edit the "Pickup," "Delivery," "Curbside pickup," or "In-store shopping" attributes on Business Profile. Larger retailers or agencies can utilize GBP API or bulk upload spreadsheet to update these attributes across multiple locations. Learn more about how you can edit attributes.

Tip: When customers search for your store, your Business Profile will prominently show which delivery modes you currently support. Keep in mind:

• Supported modes will have a "✓" and non-supported modes will have an "x."
• If you select both "Curbside pickup" and "Pickup," only "Curbside pickup" will display.
• When in-store shopping is not available: The "In-store shopping" attribute displays with an "x."
• When in-store shopping is available: The "In-store shopping" attribute does not display.
• All other modes will only display if they're available.

4. Help your customers find products they need 

For a limited time, we've made Pointy available at no charge to select grocery stores, pharmacies, and convenience stores in the US. Check if your store is eligible.

Pointy helps shoppers find what products are available in your store. It connects information from your point of sale system to your Business Profile on Google. Learn more about Pointy. 

6. Create a post

Important: Posts that include a phone number may be rejected.

Use posts to share more detailed and timely updates about your business such as:

• Information about temporary closures or reduced hours
• Precautions you're taking and what products are available
• If you provide extra services for the community
• Whether customers can expect delays

You can use posts to directly communicate with your customers on a regular basis as your business changes. Learn how to create a post.

Tip: Use the new COVID-19 post type on your Business Profile so that COVID-19 content appears in an even more relevant way to your customers.

7. Connect with your customers

Turn on messaging so your customers can reach you. You can use messaging to provide your customers with the support they need when you're not reachable by phone or after your business hours. Learn how to turn on messaging in your Business Profile.

Tip: Draft an automatic welcome message to let customers know your business status.