During the second lockdown in europe i saw many stores who got closed permanent, but should it actually only be temporarily closed because the stores still exist and are only closed because lockdown.
Is this problem so wide spread that you suspect it to be an automatic batch closure initiated by Google? Or could it just be something business owners did by themselves?
You are aware that permanently closed businesses can easily be reopened? Let us know if you need help reopening and then closing them temporarily.
In the guidelines there is a number of weeks mentioned to help distinguish between permanent and temporary closures. A 4 week lock down could explain what you are seeing.
Cheers
Morten
I’m coming across quite a few “permanently closed” edits here in the UK too - some where it’s hard to know if a business has actually gone under at this difficult time but also others, like the Cineworld cinema chain, where I know for sure it’s a temporary thing.
I’m changing those where I’m 100% sure but in some cases I simply don’t know and am hopeful the business owners will handle it. I don’t have the availability to try and contact them individually to check but in the case of entries where someone has ownership I’d hope Google are already in regular communication with them and can check these things.
That said as someone with a GMB entry I’ve had absolutely nothing from Google to try and offer any guidance on how to set things up during a lockdown but they are running a lot of TV adverts currently to get normal users to review and help out businesses.
Having the “permanently” and “temporarily” closed choices next to each other in the list might cause some keying errors I guess, I just hope none of the edits are malicious.
Edit: I forgot to add that “check the facts” contains a lot of “is this place still in business” questions did me at the moment. Some for places I’ve edited as temporary closures that are still pending. I wonder if a “no” to this marks them as permanently closed and this is the cause of a wider issue?
Places can be flagged as “temporarily closed” based on their categories, according to Local and National law / decrees related to the Covid Emergency.
If the places are flagged as Permanently Closed, the edit is probably coming from a Local Guide or the Business itself.
You can easily check if the place is claimen on GMB: If the business is Not Claimed on the listing you will see the “Claim this business” symbol and text
If the business is claimed, the place was very probably flagged as closed by them.
If the business is not claimed, it can be the result of a wrong edit, but to switch the status of the place from “permanently closed” to “temporarily closed” you will have to re-open it
No other options are actually available. This make the procedure a bit risky, because if your first edit (opening the business) is accepted, and the second one (temporary closed) remain in “pending” status, you will give a wrong information to Map users.
In this last case the choice is between two potentially wrong informations: Permanently Closed and Open
Personally, I would not change the status till the place opens again, because I can in any case open the place once I now the the business is back to activity
@ErmesT - I note with interest your comment about places being marked as “temporarily closed” due to Covid as I recently submitted an idea asking if this could be automated by Google based on local rulings.
Do you know if they already have a process in place to automate this in some locales?
This is an automatic procedure from March 2020 @turbotapeworm . Google My Business sent an email (if I remember correctly) to all the GMB owners about that.
The re-opening however must be done manually. I opened a lot of businesses in my area, when the lockdown ended
Thanks @ErmesT - I’d hoped they would be doing something to managed businesses, the problem here is that very few seem to be in that state and if they are they are incredibly neglected / underutilised.
I was hoping for some kind of automation whereby specific categories where businesses of that type could be automatically set to temporarily closed and then automatically reopened again once the local restrictions come to an end.
Unfortunately it is not so simple, @turbotapeworm , and it depends of several factors, mostly related to Categories. As you may know, a business have the possibility to add additional categories on his business. This make sense, because there are businesses that are providing multiple services/products, but in that case it will be difficult to identify automatically if a place should be set as “temporarily closed”.
In addition, there are places that still in service but do not admit people inside. I am talking about curbside pickup services, or restaurants that provide food delivery.
Re-opening is difficult too. I know by experience that not all places reopened when they were authorized to reopen, for several reasons:
- Many were not ready, in term of safety procedures, and they opened only a week, or a month later.
- Others, like in my recent post about Venice, simply decided not to open, because of the lack of customers (tourists, in this case).
- Others simply closed permanently, unable to survive to the closure.
I am not going to start a conversation here about the difficult of businesses, I simply wants to explain why it is not possible to reopen a business in an automated way
All incredibly valid points as always @ErmesT , thank you.
I guess my approach to this was more simplistic in some ways, things like tattoo artists, hair salons, nail salons, spas, gyms and more are forbidden to open in England at the current time, my thought was that any business that’s just in one of these categories could be automatically set to “temporarily closed” and then reopened again automatically on the 4th of December when the restrictions here end.
The closure script would note which had been set and then reference this when the running a script to reopen them again.
There are a lot of businesses that have transitioned from restaurant / cafe to takeaway services and these would need to be handled manually but there seems to be some that are a lot more obvious that sadly have no option but to close for now.
It’s a lot for a Local Guide to handle manually and I’d be fearful of missing one when it comes to opening them up again, I guess the approach that’s best is to just leave them, hope the business in question does the needful and if not that customers know they are likely to be closed and ignore the Google information.
I just worry as I keep seeing “permanently” closed against businesses that I strongly suspect will reopen again.
Every business can be reopened, even if it is flagged as permanently closed, @turbotapeworm , I did it several times.
The temporarily closed opinion for the Local Guides is a recent addition and, before Covid, we were only able to set a business as permanently closed, if it was closed for more (if I remember correctly) three weeks, e.g. businesses that operate only seasonally.
I think Local Guides can have a key role in this. If you access a business where you already contributed in Maps, e.g. to add a photo, the first question that you will find when clicking on “know this place” is “the business still on operation?”.
The Google Maps team is concentrated on this kind of activities, so something like fixing the views of photo, to mention something that you know very well, is obviously getting less attention. Also in Google most of the people is working from home, and they are really trying to prioritize the help to Local businesses. Unfortunately it is not always so easy
I’ve had quite a number of " is this business still in operation?" questions recently @ErmesT and all for ones that I’ve already manually marked as “temporarily closed” - I was fearful that answering “no” would mark them “permanently closed” as it concerns me that someone could see this and never come back to see it open again.
I personally think a business that’s been forced to close on a temporary basis is “still in operation”, just dormant and the question isn’t quite right for the current situation but I guess that’s open to interpretation.
I guess we’re all doing what we can to help, I just don’t have the resource to manage these changes for 1000s of local businesses and was hoping automation could be the answer. It’s a great opportunity for those out chasing points I guess
@ErmesT thanks for help.
If a business is marked as permanently closed, will it be deleted after a certain time?
No, @Varsin
A business, even if closed, will remain in Google Maps. A business will be removed only if Flagged as Non Existing, or Fake, or if it is a duplicate of an existing business. In the last case, it will be merged