Technical SEO
Opening hours schema
Opening hours schema uses OpeningHoursSpecification to describe when a business location or service opens and closes.
What it means
The structure connects dayOfWeek with opens and closes times, while validFrom and validThrough delimit seasonal exceptions. Overnight periods can close after midnight, and temporary closures require an explicit maintained source rather than silently stale annual hours.
Why it matters
Machine-readable hours are useful only when they match the location's visible and operational schedule. Incorrect holiday, time-zone or overnight handling can send customers to a closed site and propagate conflicting business facts.
Example
A restaurant lists weekday hours, a Saturday interval ending at 03:00 Sunday and a dated holiday closure. The same authoritative schedule updates visible text and LocalBusiness JSON-LD.
Common mistakes
Do not treat `00:00–00:00` as universally open all day, ignore overnight semantics or copy one schedule to every branch. Avoid leaving seasonal validThrough dates active after the exception expires.
How AYSA handles this
Signals reviewed
Visible schedule, location time zone, OpeningHoursSpecification, seasonal dates, source calendar
Problem AYSA can identify
AYSA can find branch mismatches, expired exceptions and overnight intervals flattened into incorrect same-day hours.
Recommendation prepared
The proposal maps the authoritative local schedule into recurring and dated structured intervals.
Approval preview
The user reviews regular and exceptional hours for each location before approval.
Execution
AYSA can update supported WordPress location hours and JSON-LD; external calendars require their integration owner.
Verification
AYSA compares rendered visible hours and structured intervals across ordinary, overnight and seasonal cases.
Limits
AYSA cannot maintain accurate emergency closures without a connected authoritative schedule.
Sources and further reading
- Google Search Central — LocalBusiness structured data — Official platform documentation
- Schema.org — OpeningHoursSpecification — Vocabulary definition
- Schema.org — LocalBusiness — Vocabulary definition
Written by Marius Dosinescu. Reviewed by AYSA SEO Editorial Team · 2026-07-28 00:00:00.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions
How should hours that continue past midnight be represented?
Use one interval whose closing time is earlier than its opening time, indicating that closing occurs on the following day.
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