Picture a homeowner in Kelowna at 7 on a Tuesday night. There's water under the sink, or the furnace won't kick on. They open Google Maps, type the trade, and tap the filter for places that are open. Google's Maps help page describes that filter in one line: “Hours: Check places that are currently open for business.”
So who's left? On October 19, 2026, we read the Google hours of 880 trade businesses that come up in searches in Vernon, Kelowna, West Kelowna and Penticton. At 7 p.m. on a weekday, 148 of the 192 top-3 spots in our searches (77.1 percent) go to businesses that are closed by their own posted hours. Most of the businesses still standing say they're “Open 24 hours.” And when we read the websites of those 24-hour profiles, 4 in 10 didn't say a word about 24-hour, after-hours or emergency service on the home page.
Below: how strict Google's open-now filter really is, what hours Okanagan trades post, who shows up after supper and on Sunday, what the evidence says about hours and rankings, and a 10-minute check for your own profile before the holidays.
What We Measured, and What It Can't Tell You
We ran 64 Google searches through Google's Places API: 16 trades (roofing, plumbing, electrical, heating and air conditioning, landscaping, general contractors, painting, flooring, concrete, gutters, tree service, fencing, windows, garage doors, pest control and excavating) in each of the four towns. We ran each search twice, back to back. Once as normal, and once with the API's open-now setting switched on. We did two full rounds between 8:33 and 8:37 a.m. on Monday, October 19, for 256 searches in all. That turned up 880 different businesses, including 265 that hide their address on Google.
For evenings and weekends we didn't sit up and search again. We took each business's posted hours and worked out who would be open at each time. Then we checked that method against Google's real filter at 8:34 a.m. It matched for 97.4 percent of result spots in the first round and 96.4 percent in the second.
Know the limits before you read the results:
- This is Google's places data, not the map pack on your phone. It's the same database, but what a phone shows also depends on where the person is standing.
- Our evening and weekend numbers are worked out from posted hours. They weren't searched live. The real filter can also pull in businesses ranked below 20th, which we didn't see.
- We read home pages and called no one. A business can mention emergency service on another page, and one that does might still not pick up at 2 a.m.
- We don't know how often Okanagan homeowners tap the filter. Keyword Planner counts typed searches, not taps. Typed, “plumber near me open now” gets about 260 searches a month across Canada, against 49,500 for “plumber near me.”
Google's Open-Now Filter Is Strict. No Hours Means No Listing.
Google's developer documentation says the open-now setting will “return only those places that are open for business at the time the query is sent.” We wanted to see what that means in practice.
In our first round, 43 result spots went to profiles with no hours at all. Not one of them showed up in any open-now result. Same in the second round: 42 spots, zero. If your profile has no hours, Google treats you as closed every minute of the week once someone filters.
Posted hours are taken just as literally. At 8:34 a.m. on a Monday, 18 businesses in the normal top 3 were closed according to their own hours, mostly ones that open at 9. All 18 dropped out of the filtered results. None stayed. That changed the top 3 more than you'd expect for a Monday morning: 19 of 192 top-3 spots (9.9 percent) disappeared with the filter on, at a time when 90.0 percent of the businesses with posted hours were open.
The good news is that almost everyone has hours set. Only 41 of the 880 profiles (4.7 percent) have none, and they're mostly new: 11.7 percent of profiles with fewer than 10 Google reviews have no hours, and none of the 53 with 200 or more. Just 1 of 192 top-3 spots went to a profile without hours. We can't tell how much of that is the missing hours and how much is the missing reviews.
Most Okanagan Trades Close at 5 and Skip Sunday
Of the 839 profiles that post hours, 135 (16.1 percent) say “Open 24 hours.” The rest look like a normal trade schedule. Of the 703 with weekday hours, 310 (44.1 percent) open before 8 a.m. 487 (69.3 percent) close by 5 p.m., and only 125 (17.8 percent) stay open past 6.
Weekends are thinner. Counting the 24-hour profiles, 47.1 percent are open at some point on Saturday and 31.3 percent on Sunday.
None of that is wrong. Crews start early and finish early, and most trades don't want calls at 9 p.m. It only matters when a homeowner filters for who's open, and then it matters a lot.
Not sure what your profile shows after 5? Book a free 20-minute call. We'll look at your Google hours, holiday hours and the rest of your profile with you, run the same open-now search a homeowner would, and tell you exactly what we'd change. If it's already right, we'll tell you that too.
Book a Free Profile Check →After 6 p.m., the Open-Now Results Belong to “Open 24 Hours” Profiles
Here's what the same 64 searches look like at different times, using each business's posted hours. The middle column keeps only the businesses that are open, from the same top 20, and asks how many of the first three say “Open 24 hours.”
| When the homeowner searches | Normal top 3 still open | Open-now top 3 that say “Open 24 hours” | Searches with fewer than 3 open in the top 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday 8:34 a.m. (when we searched) | 173 (90.1%) | 33 of 192 (17.2%) | 0 of 64 |
| Tuesday 7 a.m. | 100 (52.1%) | 59 of 179 (33.0%) | 7 of 64 |
| Tuesday noon | 191 (99.5%) | 31 of 192 (16.1%) | 0 of 64 |
| Tuesday 6 p.m. | 63 (32.8%) | 77 of 168 (45.8%) | 12 of 64 |
| Tuesday 7 p.m. | 44 (22.9%) | 96 of 149 (64.4%) | 22 of 64 |
| Tuesday 9 p.m. | 34 (17.7%) | 109 of 135 (80.7%) | 27 of 64 |
| Saturday 10 a.m. | 95 (49.5%) | 66 of 190 (34.7%) | 1 of 64 |
| Sunday 11 a.m. | 67 (34.9%) | 77 of 179 (43.0%) | 8 of 64 |
| Sunday 7 p.m. | 39 (20.3%) | 107 of 135 (79.3%) | 29 of 64 |
At 7 p.m. on a Tuesday, 44 of the 192 top-3 spots (22.9 percent) belong to businesses that are open. Filter for open and 96 of the 149 spots left in the top 3 (64.4 percent) go to profiles that say “Open 24 hours.” By 9 p.m. it's 80.7 percent. And in 22 of the 64 searches, fewer than three of Google's top 20 are open at 7 p.m. at all.
Sunday at 7 p.m. looks like a weekday at 9. Saturday morning is better, because about half the trades work Saturdays.
It depends heavily on the trade:
| Trade | Profiles with hours | Say “Open 24 hours” | Open Sunday | Top-3 spots open at 7 p.m. Tuesday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | 73 | 41 (56.2%) | 47 (64.4%) | 7 of 12 |
| Heating and air conditioning | 72 | 25 (34.7%) | 29 (40.3%) | 6 of 12 |
| Tree service | 51 | 12 (23.5%) | 21 (41.2%) | 6 of 12 |
| Electrical | 76 | 18 (23.7%) | 21 (27.6%) | 4 of 12 |
| Gutters | 47 | 3 (6.4%) | 16 (34.0%) | 4 of 12 |
| Excavating | 57 | 10 (17.5%) | 20 (35.1%) | 3 of 12 |
| Roofing | 59 | 8 (13.6%) | 20 (33.9%) | 3 of 12 |
| Pest control | 34 | 10 (29.4%) | 17 (50.0%) | 2 of 12 |
| Painting | 64 | 8 (12.5%) | 29 (45.3%) | 2 of 12 |
| General contractors | 73 | 3 (4.1%) | 10 (13.7%) | 2 of 12 |
| Garage doors | 28 | 4 (14.3%) | 8 (28.6%) | 1 of 12 |
| Concrete | 64 | 7 (10.9%) | 22 (34.4%) | 1 of 12 |
| Landscaping | 71 | 5 (7.0%) | 14 (19.7%) | 1 of 12 |
| Fencing | 47 | 2 (4.3%) | 7 (14.9%) | 1 of 12 |
| Windows | 50 | 2 (4.0%) | 10 (20.0%) | 1 of 12 |
| Flooring | 45 | 0 (0.0%) | 5 (11.1%) | 0 of 12 |
Plumbing holds up best because more than half of plumbing profiles (41 of 73) say they're open around the clock. Even so, only 7 of the 12 top-3 plumbing spots across the four towns are open at 7 p.m. For flooring it's 0 of 12, and for landscaping 1 of 12.
4 in 10 “Open 24 Hours” Profiles Don't Say It on Their Own Website
If the after-hours results belong to 24-hour profiles, the next question is whether those businesses really work 24 hours. We can't answer that without calling them at 2 a.m., and we didn't. What we could do was read what their own websites say.
135 profiles in our searches say “Open 24 hours.” 15 have no website or only a Facebook page, and 2 wouldn't load. We read the home pages of the other 118, first as plain HTML and then in a real browser for any page that didn't mention it, and we checked every match by hand.
- 60 (50.8 percent) say 24/7, 24 hours, around the clock or after-hours service on the home page.
- 11 (9.3 percent) mention emergency work but don't say when they take it.
- 47 (39.8 percent) say none of it.
Most of the gap sits outside the trades that usually take urgent calls. Among plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling, garage door, tree service and pest control companies, most back the claim up somewhere on the home page. Among everyone else, 27 of 34 home pages say nothing about after-hours work. Roofers are the exception (6 of 7 back it up). Every excavating company in that group says none of it (9 of 9), and so does every painting company (5 of 5).
A few examples, with the names left out. One painting company's Google profile says “Open 24 hours” while its website says it's available Monday to Saturday and usually replies within 24 hours. One company's site says its phones are answered 24 hours a day, then lists office hours of 8 to 5 on weekdays and appointments on weekends. That's a fair description of a real business. It just isn't what “Open 24 hours” tells a homeowner at 9 p.m.
We aren't saying these businesses are lying. Some probably picked 24 hours so their profile never shows “Closed.” Some set it years ago. But a homeowner who filters for open at 9 p.m. and calls a painter who's asleep doesn't come away thinking well of the painter, or of Google.
Does Being Open Help You Rank? What the Evidence Says
The filter is one thing. The bigger question is whether Google moves open businesses up even when nobody taps it.
In December 2023, Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky reported that “As of November 2023, Google appears to be looking at whether a business is currently open as a ranking factor for local pack rankings.” The examples in that post were a lawyer, a psychiatrist and restaurants, not trades. As quoted by BrightLocal, Google's Search Liaison account then said Google has “long used” openness in its local ranking systems and that “it recently became a stronger signal for non-navigational queries.” Google added: “This might change in various ways, as we continue to evaluate the usefulness of it, however.”
BrightLocal then tracked 50 businesses in 10 categories, electricians and HVAC contractors among them, at different times of day. Its conclusion on the 24-hour question: “Opening hours set to 'open 24 hours' do not seem to necessarily result in higher local rankings.” BrightLocal also says it “does not advise changing your business's opening hours to anything other than what is true and accurate.”
Our data agrees on the 24-hour part. In the normal, unfiltered results, 24-hour profiles hold 16.2 percent of top-3 spots among profiles with hours and 17.0 percent of spots 4 to 20. No edge we could see. All our live searches ran between 8:33 and 8:37 in the morning, when 90.0 percent of businesses were open, so we couldn't test the evening effect Sterling Sky described. That research is from late 2023, and Google said then that it might change.
What Google says today is simpler. Its local ranking tips say “Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results,” and list your business hours, including special hours, as part of that info.
The 10-Minute Hours Check for Your Google Profile
- Search yourself after hours. Tonight after 7, search your trade and your town in Google Maps and set the Hours filter to places that are open. Note who's there, and check if you're one of them.
- Post the hours a customer can actually reach you. Google's profile guidelines say: “Provide your regular customer-facing hours of operation.” For a service business with no shop, our read is that those are the hours someone answers the phone and can book the job.
- Only say “Open 24 hours” if someone picks up at 2 a.m. and can send a truck. That's when the after-hours searches come to you, and it's the promise a homeowner hears.
- Appointment only? Know the trade-off. The same guidelines say businesses “that operate only by appointment” shouldn't provide hours. That keeps you accurate, but it also means you'll never show up when someone filters for open. If you answer calls at set times, those are your hours.
- Set holiday hours now. Google's holiday list for Canada includes Remembrance Day (Wednesday, November 11), Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. On those dates, Google says “a warning may appear on your Business Profile that tells users your business hours might differ.” Its special hours page adds: “It's a good idea to confirm your hours for official holidays, even if they're the same as your regular hours.” Special hours cover a closure of up to 6 days. For 7 or more, Google says to mark the business temporarily closed.
- Re-check your hours once a month. Google and the public can suggest changes to your profile, hours included. Our post on Google's 4-day rule for suggested edits covers how to catch them.
- Make your website say the same thing. If your profile says 24 hours and your site says 8 to 5, a homeowner will believe whichever one lets them down.
Hours are one small part of the profile, and they're the part almost nobody looks at again after setup. Our Google Business Profile management keeps them current with the rest of your profile. If you're working on rankings in the Okanagan, start with our Vernon and Kelowna pages or our local SEO service.
How we did this: On October 19, 2026, between 8:33 and 8:37 a.m. Pacific we ran 64 Google Places API text searches (16 trades in Vernon, Kelowna, West Kelowna and Penticton, top 20 each, service-area businesses included), each one twice in a row with and without the open-now setting, in two rounds. We worked out evening and weekend results from each business's posted regular hours, then read the home page of every “Open 24 hours” business we could load. We didn't call anyone, and we haven't named any business.