2022
The official procedure for Local Guides to prevent Google Maps users from going to a place that is actually temporarily closed (minimum period of 2 weeks) or closed for the season is to mark the place as permanently closed. I find this a very bad idea and will share in this post why.
In fact, I suggest not to use the permanently closed option as we are told to do.
“The rules for closures are that anything that is closed for two weeks or more should be marked as closed. This would include permanent closures. Should a closed feature reopen, there is an option to mark closed features as reopened.” @Flash (Connect Moderator and Google Maps Expert).
Source
In case you would like to see more evidence and source information to convince yourself that this what Google wants us to do, jump to the “Appendix” in the first comment of this article.
Why do I think this is so bad?
In short:
- Why mislead people by labeling something as permanently closed, whilst this gives the impression that the place is out of business or perhaps relocated?
- Telling people to use a solution that appears to be intended for something else, feels very much like a work-around. Something that we are told is against the Google Maps ethos and sometimes grounds for getting suspended! This would be understandable at the early stages of the Google Maps rebuild, but not four years down the line.
- Permanently Closed places do not show up in (general) search results.
- This could potentially hurt your trust-score.
Number one and two on my list are bad enough, but numbers three and four are why I strongly recommend that you should not label a place as permanently closed when it is in fact temporarily closed.
Google Maps: Correct and Relevant information
I find it pretty mind-boggling that Google is spending so many resources in becoming more detailed. The Google Maps team works hard to improve their info-real-estate and yet purposely fails to provide the users of Google Search and Google Maps with correct information about the “open or closed for business status” of a place.
When a fellow Local Guide objected against Flash his instructions to permanently close a business for a limited period of time because this could hurt the business, this was @Flash his response:
Reading his response for the first time, was like music to my ears. But after taking the time to analyze what he is saying, you probably agree with me that he is contradicting himself.
“...we are creating the map for end users like ourselves to be able to get relevant and correct information.”
Telling end-users that a place is permanently closed whilst it is in fact not, is not correct.
On the other hand, what @Flash wrote in his first paragraph, I could fully underwrite from several negative first-hand experiences.
A couple of years ago, I drove to a waterfall in the Alps. The detour was more than an hour’s drive: wasting fuel, my time and the environment unnecessarily as it turned out that the place had been closed to the public for some time. None of the Local Guides that had been there before me, had closed the place, most likely because the sign said something along the lines of “ closed for safety reasons until further notice”. I wish I had spent more time reading all the reviews, as it turned out that many previous visitors mentioned the closure and thus gave it a one-star rating.
Another personal negative experience was the closure of a world-renowned archeological maritime museum in Turkey. Nobody closed the place on Google Maps, yet there are many damaging reviews written by people (not just Local Guides) that wasted their time and money and expressed their disappointment/ frustration.
So what I have repeatedly observed is that the general workaround by visitors and Local Guides is to write negative reviews warning people about the temporary closure. Rather damaging for the business as it will still affect their rating AFTER they reopened.
Please note that the choice to use negative reviews as a workaround instead of the alternative solution to mark a place as permanently closed, perfectly illustrates that people don’t feel that to be a correct option.
Saying that the business in question only has itself to blame, as they could get their opening status changed through the GMB program, is rather inadequate as so many businesses are not claimed or managed.
[Side note: claimed businesses are often deserted for one reason or another. In other words, no employee is actively engaged in caring for the listing.]
Credit to @KatyaL for recognizing this difference, when @ScholzA wrote about the temporarily closed Pentagon’s 9/11 Memorial, a rather high profile place with many daily visitors that is unclaimed on Google Maps.
So much for the purpose of Google Maps, so beautifully described in @Flash his comment above. In case you have forgotten, Google Maps is about relevant and correct information.
My personal main objection: Search!
The fact that places that are closed for the season should be marked as permanently closed goes very much against Google Maps’ own objective. I shall illustrate it with a “real world” example.
Imagine a person looking for a campsite in a certain area that he/she plans to visit in the summer. The campsite is closed during the winter, but maybe it is important to reserve a place ahead of time. First of all, campsites that are set to permanently closed do not show up in the search results (unless you search for the place specifically) and secondly, if one did come across the place on Google Maps and it tells us it is permanently closed, we would wrongly assume that they are out of business and move on to another campsite. It simply makes no sense.
The fact that places that are closed for the season should be marked as permanently closed goes very much against Google Maps’ own objective.
Would You Like To Gamble Your Trust-Score?
Imagine: You come across this POI that is closed for several months due to renovations. You mark it as permanently closed, as per instructions by Google. The verification algorithm decides to go for a second opinion and escalates the decision process regarding your edit suggestion to Check the Facts. People will be asked “This place was recently marked as permanently closed. Is this correct: Yes or No?”
How many people are going to answer Yes, whilst the place is not permanently closed but in fact only closed for some months…?
[Side note: Trust-score is a hidden score that you earned for making solid good edits that were approved. By making poor contributions your trust-score goes down].
Incomplete Help Pages
My other argument for not using the “permanently closed” option is also because of the actual official help page related to this feature. It does not mention that you can also use it for closures that are not permanent. In other words, the complete list of official purposes is missing. A fact that I have recently reported as feedback to the particular official help page in question.
WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Perhaps after reading all the above, I have convinced you that it is a bad idea to label a place as “permanently closed” when it is not. You may now wonder, what to do instead?
If you have an idea/ solution
You can either share it as feedback inside the Google Maps app or add your idea to the existing thread in the Idea Bank. I have been involved in these debates from the beginning. Check out my latest 4 solutions.
If you have an opinion
You should share it as feedback inside the app. It is the only formal route to get your feedback recorded and in the right hands. This article that expresses some of my opinions, by itself has no official value unless I write a feedback report inside the Google Maps app and provide them with a link to this article as background reading.
@Flash summed it up perfectly:
“We tell you to submit feedback because that is the way to get the information about what you would like to see directly to the team that gathers such feedback and presents it to the decision makers. It is a tool available to all users; whether they be Local Guides, other Maps users, businesses, etc. Each of those groups has a separate forum, and for each group only a small fraction actually use their respective forum; so while you're free to discuss things here and the Googlers devoted to this forum might even participate in your discussion; this is not the place to get ideas directly to the people that do the final accumulation of such feedback. We are not trying to send you away, we are trying to ensure that your feedback gets to the right place.”
Source
Let me know how you feel about this and what you plan to do from now on in the comments.
<UPDATE>
Please also share categories of places where you think it does no harm when following the official procedure of using "permanently closed"?
- Public Events (only open for a (very) short period of time per year)
Cheers!
JeroenM
Accepted Solutions
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 out this 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 solution by Googler @KatyaL to the question “How to mark place temporarily closed?” can be found here 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.
Is it possible that the "temporarily closed" option is added to the closing reason tab and then the duration tab will appear with the amount of time tab and the week or month selection tab?
