Why does AI get my business hours wrong, or say I’m closed?

Nobody alerts you. As Search Engine Journal put it, “there’s no report that alerts businesses if an AI answer incorrectly states hours for your location or claims your business is closed” (Q5). In one vendor test of 10,000 US businesses, only 48% to 56% of AI answers fully matched each business’s Google profile, and a wrong phone number was the most common error, and Insites says some of those are likely call-tracking numbers (R20, C). No study we found measures wrong hours on their own.

Common causes (from how these answers are built, not from a study): listings that disagree with each other; holiday or seasonal hours never updated; hours shown only in an image, a PDF or a script-loaded widget; an old page still online; another business with a similar name.

Fix it in five steps.

1. Update your Google Business Profile, including special and holiday hours. Google lists an up-to-date Business Profile among the basics for its AI features (Q1).
2. Put your hours on your website as plain text, the same as the profile.
3. Make the same change on Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp and Facebook.
4. Report the wrong answer. On a Google AI Overview, click the thumbs-down icon, then “Report a problem” (R24).
5. Ask the same question again in a week or two, in each tool, and keep a note of the answer.