This article outlines how to use the Open Date field on your entities to display future opening dates on listings for locations that are opening soon.
- For Google, you can add locations that are opening up to a year in advance. Locations will appear on Google around 90 days before opening, with a message that includes the open date.
- Future opening dates will only display on Google listings.
- Apple uses the Open Date field to suppress listings until the specified date, ensuring they go live on opening day and not before.
To add open dates to Google listings, your Google Business Profile account must be linked with Yext. To link your account, see Link Your Google Business Profile Account.
Create a Custom Field for the Open Month
You can utilize a custom Open Month field if you are unsure of the actual opening date but are aware of the month. If or when you know the exact date of opening, you should be utilizing the Open Date field, which is discussed in the next section.
- Click Knowledge Graph in the navigation bar and click Configuration.
- Click Fields.
- Click on the + Add Field button.
- Click Select Field Type and select Date from the drop-down menu.
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Enter Open Month in the field name.
- Note: You must use this exact name in order for the fields to be mapped correctly to Google Business Profile.
- Select Entity Types and select the entity types that this custom field should be available for.
- Click Save Field or Save and Add Another.
- Request your future Open Month field to sync to Google
- Reach out to Yext Support and request to configure your account settings to push the new Open Month field to Google.
Add and Apply an Open Date to Entities
Set the Open Date field for a single location or set of locations.
- Click Content in the navigation bar and click Entities.
- Click on your desired entity to apply an open date. To apply an open date to multiple entities, click the checkbox to the left of your desired entities, and click Bulk Edit from the More Actions dropdown.
- In Entity Edit, click the Other Fields section in the left sidebar and scroll to the Open Date field.
- Enter your desired future open date for the location(s) you are editing and click Save.
Best Practices and Guidelines
- If you are using the legacy method of managing open dates for Google (by creating a custom Open Date field), you do not need to make any changes.
- Custom Open Date field information will still sync to Google.
- We recommend using the built-in Open Date field for any future updates to locations.
- You can set or change the open date for locations at any time. However, we recommend making as few changes to the open date as possible after setting it, in order to ensure accuracy on listings and to avoid any customer confusion.
- Before the open date, you can add as much information as you like to your location entities. Google will not publish any information other than the name, category, open date, address, and cover photo to listings until after the open date for the location.
- Do not alter the location's Closed field prior to the opening date, as this may prevent listings from being created.
- Google will display a "Recently Opened" message on the listing for a few days after the open date.