Best practice: Entering Opening hours

[JanVanHaver]

[As an experienced Local Guide, I now sometimes come across inconsistencies or notice that errors have been made that I used to make myself when I started out. So I am now publishing a few 'best practice' posts, in the hope it can help others.]

UPDATE 01/09/2018: a recent update in the Google Maps software has changed the way opening hours are entered. Not all content in this post is still up to date - it will be adapted soon.

Entering opening hours correctly can be quite challenging the first time you do it, especially if the shop has different opening hours on different days or is closed for lunch on some days and not on others. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to go through an 'Add hours' routine for each unique period of uninterrupted hours that the business is open - which can be just for 1 day of the week or for multiple days of the week.

Picture by paulbr75 at Pixabay

A specific example will no doubt make this complex sounding concept more clear. Let's say a shop is opened on Monday and Tuesday from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 14:00 to 18:00, then on Wednesday from 9:00 to 13:30 and finally on Saturday from 9:00 to 18:00. To enter these opening hours, you will need to go through the 'Add hours' routine 4 times:

1. select Monday and Tuesday from the list of week days, then select '9' and '00' in the 'Open time' screen (or screens, actually, as you get presented a screen for entering the hours first and then a second one for the minutes) and then '12' and '00' in the 'Close time' screen
2. click 'Add another set of hours' and once more select Monday and Tuesday from the list of week days, then select '14' and '00' in the 'Open time' screen and '18' and '00' in the 'Close time' screen
3. select Wednesday from the list of week days, then select '9' and '00' in the 'Open time' screen and '13' and '30' in the 'Close time' screen
4. select Satuday from the list of week days, then select '9' and '00' in the 'Open time' screen and '18' and '00' in the 'Close time' screen

When all lines are added click Send to collect your points!

Other posts in this series:

Best practice: ALL CAPS / all lowercase

Best Practice: Correcting pin location

Best Practice: Choosing a more specific category

Best Practice: Submit changes one by one

Best Practice: Find the right zoom level

Best Practice: Reporting duplicates

Best Practice: Adding places without house number

Best Practice: Correcting errors you accidentally made

Best Practice: Filtering 'Check the facts'

Best Practice: Find the right category

Best Practice: Create on mobile / Complete on desktop

Best Practice: Improve your reputation

Best Practice: The best order for suggesting edits

Best Practice: Get rid of legal names

Best Practice: Attempts to add bus stop or train station

Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, and I don't claim any level of official endorsement.

[MarinSt]

Hi @JanVanHaver,

Thank you for describing the process in a well structured and detailed way. This will be very helpful for new Local Guides that have just started their experience with adding a missing place or editing existing one.

Cheers, 

Marin

[JanVanHaver]

Thanks @MarinSt for the nice comment. For me that definitely counts as a level of official endorsement 😀

More similar posts coming soon...

[JeroenM]

Nice work, @JanVanHaver.
Are you suggesting that manual entering of opening hours is the "preferred way" above simply clicking a photo of the opening hours and uploading the photo directly from the app 😉

If so, please explain why you think so. Thanks a million!

Warm regards,

JeroenM

[JanVanHaver]

Well @JeroenM, I prefer to enter the opening hours manually as this gives me more control over what happens with the data: in my experience, entering opening hours that make sense will more or less always result in an 'approved' within seconds, while uploading a picture brings no guarantee what will happen & when it will happen.

Some people say that at times I tend to being a bit of a control freak, but obviously they are heavily mistaken 😀

[JeroenM]

Interesting, I have never had any problem with uploading the photos. I do confess, however, that I do not always check if Google mined the data correctly from the image.

[aka_Rὁn]

There is now an additional step in the entry of opening and closing hours and that involves screens which allow you to select the minutes part of the time rather than only the hours.

There is also a dedicated link which is labelled something like "add another set of hours".

Perhaps these features were not part of the system when you first reviewed it.

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[TravellerG]

EXCELLENT, Dear friend @JanVanHaver

Congratulations, as rightly told by @MarinSt (& other friends) - You have done a wonderful Job.. Will keep this in mind..

Great work, good compilation, lot of knowledge..

Prayers

[JanVanHaver]

Yes they were @aka_Rὁn, but reading back the original post (which was actually the very first one) I indeed notice that those 2 aspects are not explained as detailed as they could. So, I will review the post soon.

Thanks for the suggestion!

[aka_Rὁn]

@JanVanHaver

You are most welcome indeed and it is we who should be thanking you for all that you are doing to help both novice and seasoned contributors to navigate an overly complicated entry system which - (based on  remarks by some of those who   are "in the know" and who consequently adopt  an authoritarian  stance)   - is deliberately unfriendly and abstruse by design in order to discourage spammers.

Whether or not  such claims represent an accurate description of the automated assessments is hard to determine at this point but in the meantime it seems to  have set up a sort of feudal  hierarchy based on "need to know" privilege  and a blurring of basic boundaries between "guidelines"and "rules".

Such structures can make sense in the world of paid work but tend to be counter-productive in the voluntary sector.

It bothers me that we could be seriously affecting our - as yet undisclosed - "trust levels" - or even flagged as spammers - each time one of our contributions receives a "NOT APPLIED" response and so the "unofficial" guidance you are continually providing  is even more valuable  to us all - even if it is countered by  predictably dismissive comments by one or two of the self-appointed Bot Cops.

As the replies to your postings on this forum make crystal clear, you are highly valued and trusted by many of us and our gratitude to you is sincere.

Keep up the excellent work, my friend, you are helping the Google Maps community to gain a greater sense of it own  inclusive and democratic identity and are helping to lift morale considerably.

I am but one of many who recognise the worth of your achievements and am inspired by your example.

Thank you again.

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