Want more website traffic? Update your restaurant hours

A restaurant’s online presence is arguably as important as its physical storefront these days. Many consumers’ first step when deciding where to eat is a Google search, or, increasingly, an AI chatbot query.

For restaurants, getting "chosen" by these sources can be a bit of a guessing game, subject to opaque and ever-changing algorithms. But a new report suggests it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

Marqii, a tech company that helps restaurants manage their online presence, analyzed which elements of a restaurant’s web profile actually move the needle in terms of getting surfaced to consumers. It looked at restaurant data on its platform and also surveyed 54 operators about how they manage their restaurant’s online profile.

The survey concluded that the most impactful thing a restaurant can do in terms of improving its online visibility is also one of the simplest: updating business hours.

Doing this just once resulted in a fourfold difference in a restaurant’s visibility compared to operators that never touched their business hours. Those that changed their hours got 177 average daily search views vs. 42 views for those that did not.

They also saw four times more requests for directions, suggesting customer intent to visit, and five times more website clicks. Those numbers get bigger the more frequently a restaurant adjusts its hours.

Marqii said this is because search engines and AI assistants interpret regular, accurate updates as a sign that a restaurant is active and trustworthy, and respond by giving that business a boost in search results.

“Hours are also the field guests punish hardest when they're wrong,” the report says, another good reason to keep that information current.

Here are three other practices the report identified as particularly impactful:

• Complete your Google Business Profile: Profiles that include photos, menu items, attributes (like “free Wi-Fi” or “outdoor seating”), and categories (like “Italian restaurant”) saw 4 to 5 times more menu and website clicks than the most bare-bones listings. Photos are the biggest opportunity here, Marqii said, as only 39% of menu items on its platform had a photo, even though customers and search algorithms tend to seek them out.

• Flesh out the menu, but don’t go overboard: Online menus should include essential info like item names, prices, descriptions, and photos. But add too much detail and it can confuse customers and algorithms. Menus with “medium completeness” got more views and clicks than those with “high completeness,” Marqii found. “This reframes the goal from ‘complete everything’ to ‘structure the essentials well,’” the report says.

• Respond to reviews: Marqii encouraged operators to respond to reviews, noting that it signals engagement to Google and care to customers. And while 72% of operators believe they respond to almost every review, Marqii’s data found that less than 30% respond to more than half.

"Search is consolidating into answers, and answers are composed from structured data," the report concludes. "The operators who win the next few years will be the ones whose information is accurate, complete, and consistent enough for an AI assistant to quote without hesitation."

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