OpeningHoursSpecification
Example: A diner with valid OpeningHoursSpecification + holiday overrides shows the correct 'Closed Christmas Day' notice in Google's panel — without it, hungry holiday-eve searches see stale hours.
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the Schema.org type Google reads to render your hours in search results
A specific Schema.org structured-data type for representing when a place is open. Lives inside a Restaurant JSON-LD block as one or more entries with dayOfWeek, opens, and closes fields. Holiday overrides use the same type via the parallel specialOpeningHoursSpecification property. The format Google's Rich Results parser actually consumes — the difference between "hours vary" and a full weekly grid in your search snippet.
Why it matters
The customer searching "is [restaurant] open right now?" doesn't open your website — they glance at the rich snippet and decide. Without an OpeningHoursSpecification block on every page, Google falls back to "hours vary" or to whatever your Google Business Profile says, and when those two sources disagree your listing inherits the lower confidence. Open Hours generates a complete block (with the cross-midnight defensive pattern handled correctly) for any week + closure schedule you enter.
Frequently asked
What is openingHoursSpecification?
OpeningHoursSpecification is a specific Schema.org structured-data type for representing when a place is open. Lives inside a Restaurant JSON-LD block as one or more entries with dayOfWeek, opens, and closes fields. Holiday overrides use the same type via the parallel specialOpeningHoursSpecification property. The format Google's Rich Results parser actually consumes — the difference between "hours vary" and a full weekly grid in your search snippet.
Why does openingHoursSpecification matter for a restaurant?
The customer searching "is [restaurant] open right now?" doesn't open your website — they glance at the rich snippet and decide. Without an OpeningHoursSpecification block on every page, Google falls back to "hours vary" or to whatever your Google Business Profile says, and when those two sources disagree your listing inherits the lower confidence. Open Hours generates a complete block (with the cross-midnight defensive pattern handled correctly) for any week + closure schedule you enter.
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