A Business That Closes for Two Months

The choice

Plenty of businesses close for a defined period: a seasonal operation shutting for winter, a trade taking January off, a shop closing for a refurbishment, or an owner taking an extended break.

The listing offers a temporarily closed status, and using it is honest and costs something.

Leaving the listing open is better for visibility and misleads anybody who telephones or visits.

Neither is clean, and the right answer depends mostly on how long the closure is.

What temporarily closed does

Worth understanding before choosing it.

The listing remains, with reviews and photographs intact, marked so that customers can see you are not currently trading.

Visibility in local results generally reduces, since a closed business is a poor answer to somebody looking for one now.

That reduction is not instantly reversed when you reopen, and a period of recovery afterwards is normal.

It is considerably better than permanently closed, which is a different status with a much larger effect and is genuinely difficult to recover from.

Deciding by length

• Under two weeks: special hours, and a post.
• Two to six weeks: special hours, a post, and a clear message.
• Over six weeks: temporarily closed is more honest.
• Every year, predictably: treat it as part of the annual routine.
• Never: permanently closed, unless you have actually stopped.

The thresholds are judgement rather than rules, and the principle behind them is whether somebody arriving at your listing would be materially misled.

The short closure, done properly

For anything up to about six weeks, keeping the listing open is usually right, provided you say what is happening.

Enter the closed dates as special hours, so the listing shows closed on those days rather than showing normal hours.

Add a post using the event type, with real start and end dates, saying when you close and when you reopen. That stays visible for the whole period rather than expiring after a week.

Update the description if it helps, and change the voicemail and the website to say the same thing.

Somebody looking you up then gets an accurate picture, and the listing keeps its position for when you return.

The long closure

Beyond a couple of months, special hours alone starts to mislead, since a listing that appears in results is implying availability.

Temporarily closed is the honest choice, and it should be paired with the same communication: a post with the reopening date, a clear website message, and a voicemail saying the same.

Set the reopening date in a calendar the moment you close, because a listing left marked closed after reopening is the expensive version of this mistake.

Expect a few weeks of reduced visibility after you reverse it, and plan the reopening marketing accordingly rather than assuming trade resumes on the day.

A worked example

A seasonal business closed each year from November to March and left their listing untouched.

Every winter they received calls and occasional visitors, and their reviews accumulated complaints from people who had arrived to find the place shut.

They changed approach: temporarily closed from the first of November, a post giving the reopening date, the same message on the website and voicemail, and a calendar entry for the reversal.

The winter complaints stopped entirely.

Visibility in the first fortnight of the season was noticeably weaker than previous years, and recovered over about six weeks.

They compensated by emailing their list a fortnight before reopening, which produced a stronger opening month than the drift-in trade had.

Their view was that the reviews they had stopped collecting were worth more than the fortnight of ranking.

The reopening is the marketing

The part that turns a seasonal closure from a cost into a rhythm.

A business reopening after months has a genuine reason to contact everybody, which is rarer than it sounds.

Email your list a fortnight ahead with the date. Post to the listing. Photograph the place being prepared. Ask last season's customers to book.

That produces a busy first week rather than a slow one, which matters because the first weeks are also when your listing visibility is still recovering.

Businesses that treat reopening as a marketing event rather than as a door being unlocked have a materially better season.

Do not go silent for the whole period

An avoidable error that lengthens the recovery.

A listing with no activity for four months looks dormant, which is exactly the signal that leads to automated inference that a business has stopped.

Post occasionally during the closure: preparation for next season, work happening behind the scenes, the reopening date as it approaches.

Answer reviews and questions as they arrive.

That costs a few minutes a month and keeps the listing looking like a business that exists, which shortens the recovery when you reopen.

Tell the people who already know you

The channel that is unaffected by any of this, and the one seasonal businesses underuse.

Your list, your past customers, and anybody who has bought before do not need to find you in search results, because they already have your details.

Which means a closure costs you far less if those people know the dates, and a reopening is far stronger if they were told a fortnight ahead.

A seasonal business with a list is largely insulated from the visibility question this article is about, and one without a list is fully exposed to it.

If you close every year, building that list during the season is the most valuable thing you can do for the closure, and it costs a card in every bag.

The counter-case

There is a defensible argument for leaving the listing open through a long closure.

A business taking bookings for the following season is genuinely trading, even with the doors shut, and marking it closed misrepresents that in the other direction.

Where you are answering the phone, taking deposits, or accepting bookings, open with accurate special hours and a clear post is arguably more truthful than closed.

The test is whether a customer contacting you during the period can be helped. If they can, you are open in the sense that matters. If they cannot, you are not, and saying so is the honest position.

Decide on that rather than on the visibility cost, which is the reason most businesses choose wrongly.

The routine

1. Decide by length, and by whether you can help anybody.
2. Use special hours for anything short.
3. Use temporarily closed for a long shutdown.
4. Post the reopening date as an event with real dates.
5. Match the website and voicemail.
6. Diarise the reversal the day you close.
7. Post occasionally through the closure.

Step six is the one with the worst consequence if skipped, since a listing still marked closed in April is invisible during the month you need it most.

Changing a listing's state is covered in a listing for a business that moved.

Frequently asked questions

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