Many businesses have been closed, or partially open, since March, and many have become entirely silent online. This is understandable: when the doors are locked, the listing, the Facebook page and the inbox tend to be set aside as well.
It is an easy mistake to make, and a costly one.
A closed business is still searched for. People look up the restaurant they miss, the dive shop they want to return to, or the store that used to carry a product they need. The dive centre we are part of on Nusa Ceningan has not had a guest since the spring, yet it must still appear active to everyone who will want to return. What people find determines whether they wait for the business or quietly choose another.
Why does online silence suggest a permanent closure?
This is the central point. When someone sees a listing with outdated hours, no posts since February and three unanswered reviews, they do not conclude that the business is on a temporary break. They conclude that it has closed for good.
They then find an alternative: perhaps a competitor that continued posting throughout this period, or a large chain. In either case, the customer is lost before the business has even reopened, and the business will never know it happened.
Preventing this requires little effort, about twenty minutes a week. However, someone must take responsibility for doing it.
How do you mark a temporary closure on Google My Business?
Google has also had an unusual spring. In March, it made the "temporarily closed" option easy to find, added a COVID-19 update type to posts, and for a time paused new reviews and review replies while its support teams were under strain. Most of these functions have been gradually restored over the past few months. Settings change location, so we recommend checking the official Google My Business Help centre for the current steps.
The principles remain the same:
- Use "temporarily closed," never "permanently closed." A permanent closure is difficult to reverse, and it signals to Google and to everyone else that the business no longer exists.
- Do not delete the listing. Deleting it does not remove the business from Maps; it removes your control. The listing can remain online with outdated information that you can no longer correct.
- If you are partially open (takeout, pickup, phone orders, an online store), remain open on Google and update your hours and description to state exactly what is available.
- Use special hours for holidays and short closures, so that your regular hours resume automatically.
Seasonal businesses in Quebec face this every year, with or without a pandemic: a campground, an ice cream stand, a summer boutique on a lake. A temporarily closed status with the reopening date in the description, along with occasional posts through the winter, is far more effective than a listing that goes inactive in October and appears abandoned until May.
Why continue answering reviews and messages?
Reviews continue to arrive during a closure. Some describe visits from months earlier; others come from people who arrived at a locked door because the listed hours were wrong. Both deserve a response.
A positive review should receive a thank-you and, during the closure, a note on when you hope to reopen. A negative review should receive a short, measured reply that addresses the concern seriously. Prospective customers read the replies more closely than the reviews themselves, to see whether there is a person behind the business and how that person handles a problem.
The same applies to messages: Google messaging, Facebook, Instagram, the contact form and email. If you cannot monitor all of them, disable those you cannot monitor and indicate on your listing how to reach you. A message button that receives no response is worse than none at all.
What about Tripadvisor and other sites?
Tourism businesses depend on more than Google: Tripadvisor, booking platforms, Facebook, and for some, Yelp. Each has its own method for displaying a temporary closure. Update them one at a time and record which ones you changed. All of them will need to be updated again at reopening, and by then it is very likely that half of them will have been forgotten.
Why post updates while closed?
A closed business has much to show even with nothing to sell: repairs, long-postponed painting, the team, the garden, a new dish in development, what reopening will look like under the new rules, or a thank-you to regular customers who wrote to ask after the business.
None of this needs to be polished. A phone photo and three sentences once a week inform anyone searching for the business that it will reopen. On Google, posts appear directly on the listing, which is where most people see a business first.
This is the day-to-day side of local SEO and social media management. It may seem like marketing, but in most cases it simply means maintaining a presence. Most owners can manage it themselves once it becomes routine.
What should be done on the day of reopening?
Restore everything on the same day: remove the temporarily closed status, correct the hours, update the description and post a photo of the open door. Then work through your list of other sites. The first weeks after reopening are when the customers who waited return, and many are glad to leave a review if asked. We recommend asking them.
Why plan for the next closure now?
Few people expect the situation to be over. Public health officials are already discussing a second wave in the fall, and the rules that will accompany it are unknown. Even without a virus, temporary closures occur: renovations, a flood, an owner's illness, or a road closed for the season.
While there is some breathing room this summer, we recommend preparing a one-page checklist: every place the business is listed, what to change on each, and who holds the passwords. When the next closure comes, as it will, the update will take twenty minutes instead of a week of urgent work.