In a recent development intended to increase the ease of managing your Business information on Google platforms, Google is now syncing business hours (and perhaps other information) between Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) and Google Business Profile (GBP). If your law firm advertises with LSAs, changes to your business hours on the LSA platform will automatically synchronize with your Google Business profile within 24 hours of the update.

While this development can be exciting for users looking to streamline the process of updating information, it may have more significant ramifications for your practice’s digital footprint. If your hours of operation on your LSAs do not match your Google Business Profile, this data sync may cause problems for your firm.

For instance, if you set business hours on your GBP to reflect longer hours for your general practice, but your LSAs have shorter hours in which you do intake for a specific practice area, this discrepancy could impact your GBP. Google may mark your listing as closed and potentially show other, open competitors instead – even when your office is technically open – negatively impacting your firm’s overall visibility and potential client engagement. As such, you want to carefully consider the alignment between your LSA hours and your GBP hours.

When reviewing your LSA business hours, remember this is not the same thing as your ad schedule. Your ad schedule tells Google when you would like to run your LSA, irrespective of your business hours. Be careful not to confuse the two when making updates.

Final Thoughts: Why Do You Care?

Google Business Profile is an important local SEO and digital marketing asset. Clients and the community often look at your firm’s GBP information for your law firm’s hours of operation, location, and more. Remember that you always want your Google Business Profile to be accurate, so keep a keen eye on changes made to your LSAs that may impact your GBP information.