APPENDIX
The Official Procedure for Local Guides
Corrie was a core member of the Google Local Guides Team. In those days there were no Google Moderators like today.
In the same post, @Flash confirms the official procedure and clarifies the “two-week rule”. For those of you that need an introduction to Flash, check outthis post, where we are told that he has been chosen as a messenger to inform us about rules and guidelines by Google. You may ask yourself, why does the Google Maps’ Geo Team not simply inform us via its own help pages? But that debate is for another time and perhaps another place…
The Two Week Rule
The rule that places should not be closed for more than two weeks to be eligible on Google Maps does still stand and is even mentioned in the official Local Guides Help Center.
In 2017 when Flash was still very active on LGC we were repeatedly told to close a place as “permanently closed” as the place can always easily be reopened again. In other words, when labeled permanently closed, it can still be made undone with a simple edit
A more recent answer marked as the solutionby Googler @KatyaL to the question “How to mark place temporarily closed?” can be foundhere on Local Guides Connect (LGC). It also gives the “permanently closed” solution.
Permanently Closed Places Can Be Reopened
That it is indeed easy to re-open a permanently closed business, I experienced recently, when I came across a store that was labeled as such but in fact open (again?).
Here is the official help page on how to reopen a “permanently” closed place on Maps if you are a business. For us, there is no such official help doc, but it is very simple. Find the permanently closed business listing and hit the “Suggest Edit” button. Then a pop-up screen will present you with the following question:
Even GMB members are told to use Permanently Closed
We are given the impression that members of the Google My Business program (GMB) have the ability to temporarily close their business. It appears that this is not the case, as can be illustrated with the numerous GMB forum posts on this topic. But even more convincing is the following official help page that writes:
Source
For clarification, the GMB special hours settings referred to are apparently not designed for long closers. If you are interested, I can show you GMB forum posts where business owners share workarounds and debate the matter.
So it appears that GMB members can either contact support to get their business marked as temporarily closed or mark their business as permanently closed during the desired closed period. The fact that the special hours settings are only intended for short closures is also implied by the official GMB pages.