Newsletter
Google Maps just continues to get better and better. Now on Google Maps, you can see images of the place you’re looking for. As well as viewing the area around it thanks to Street View. Recently, Google added the ability to see business hours as well as what time is the busiest at that place. Especially useful for a restaurant. On Thursday, Google announced that Google Maps will now show the holiday hours for many businesses. Now it doesn’t work for all of them, but it does work for a number of businesses on Google Maps, and it’s live right now. A great tool for those looking for a place to eat on Christmas Eve.
“When you search for a business and a major holiday is within the next seven days, you’ll see whether the business has a special holiday schedule,” Jonathan Sidi, Google Maps’ product manager, stated. “If you search for a business and the holiday hours aren’t listed, you’ll see a warning message alerting you that the actual hours may be different because of the holiday.”
These holiday hours are not just for the US, but available globally. While Google hasn’t mentioned how they are getting these holiday hours, but it’s likely from the particular business website. As holiday hours are not showing up for those businesses that have not mentioned their holiday hours online. And those that don’t have a website, still don’t have business hours either. As with other features for Google Maps and other products, you can expect that this will get better over time, but it’s still a fantastic start for Google Maps, and it’s going to be super helpful. Especially for those last minute holiday shoppers, we know who you are.
Google Maps also announced that these holiday hours will be displayed across mobile and desktop, and including their apps on Android and iOS. Google Maps just continues to get better and better. It’ll be tough for someone like Toyota to put together something better than Google, with their crowdsourced maps, but it’ll be interesting to see their new mapping service next month at CES.