{"id":4960,"date":"2023-08-14T12:14:06","date_gmt":"2023-08-14T12:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/does-setting-your-google-business-profile-as-temporarily-closed-impact-local-seo-rankings\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:03:02","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:03:02","slug":"does-setting-your-google-business-profile-as-temporarily-closed-impact-local-seo-rankings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/does-setting-your-google-business-profile-as-temporarily-closed-impact-local-seo-rankings\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Setting Your Google Business Profile as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d Impact Local SEO Rankings?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back in 2020, Google claimed that setting your Google Business Profile as &#8220;Temporarily Closed&#8221; did NOT impact your rankings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Well, what if I told you that this is not the case anymore and that marking your business as &#8220;Temporarily Closed&#8221; CAN absolutely negatively impact your rankings?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s what I found out.<\/span><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/b6xZNT975qQ\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>Looking for an easy and intuitive way to track your GBP rankings? Try the <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/local-rank-tracker\/\">Whitespark Local Rank Tracker<\/a>!<\/p>\n<h2><b>Google\u2019s Stance on the Subject<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many businesses had to shut their doors and mark their Google Business Profiles as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d. Around that time, Google\u2019s Danny Sullivan was asked on Twitter if this would have any impact on those businesses\u2019 Local SEO rankings and visibility.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Danny Sullivan reassured all local business owners that \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d wouldn\u2019t affect their rankings or visibility. That Tweet was later deleted, but here&#8217;s a screenshot of it:<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_99726\" style=\"width: 970px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-99726\" class=\"wp-image-99726 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/chrome_tiqhPeLxS3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"960\" height=\"316\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-99726\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Danny Sullivan&#8217;s deleted Tweet<\/p><\/div>\n<h2><b>What is the Current Situation? <\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I have some evidence that as of today, setting your Google Business Profile as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d DOES have a negative impact on your rankings.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Take a look at this case:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-99727 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/ApplicationFrameHost_YEMeoxbFHJ-1024x419.png\" alt=\"whitespark\" width=\"1024\" height=\"419\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are rankings for my business \u201cShaw Electrical\u201d. You can see that they are consistently stable, except for that noticeable dip around June 23.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What happened on June 23? Well, I marked my Google Business Profile as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d. Then, on June 28, I removed it and said that we were open again, and the rankings went right back up.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What lead to this?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pre-pandemic, Google did have a policy that setting your business as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d would have a negative impact on your rankings and visibility.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you marked your business as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d, you\u2019d get the following message:\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-99728 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/chrome_4JUE16iEUP.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"337\" height=\"199\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During the pandemic, many businesses had to use this feature, which prompted Google to ease up on the rules.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, Google has since put things back to the way they were.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, write this down: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Setting your Google Business Profile as \u201cTemporarily Closed\u201d WILL have a negative impact on your rankings and visibility!<\/span>Looking for an easy and intuitive way to track your GBP rankings? Try the <a href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/local-rank-tracker\/\">Whitespark Local Rank Tracker<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2020, Google claimed that setting your Google Business Profile as &#8220;Temporarily Closed&#8221; did NOT impact your rankings.\u00a0 Well, what if I told you that this is not the case anymore and that marking your business as &#8220;Temporarily Closed&#8221; CAN absolutely negatively impact your rankings?\u00a0 Here\u2019s what I found out.Looking for an easy and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Does setting your Google Business Profile as &quot;Temporarily Closed&quot; impact your business&#039; rankings and visibility? Here&#039;s eveything you need to know!","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"classification":[],"class_list":["post-4960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4964,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions\/4964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"classification","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/classification?post=4960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}