How to keep business hours and closures up to date

dev.to Data2026-11-12 18:310 views

If you run a store locator, a delivery app, a directory or a CRM of local accounts, your data starts going stale the day you load it. Businesses change their hours, move, close for renovation, or shut down for good. Nobody emails you when it happens.

How fast it drifts

In our Google Maps test we took 400 random US places from Overture Maps, a widely used open dataset. VOYGR marked 93 of them as closed. Of the 86 closures we confirmed, 23 still showed as open or had no listing on Google Maps. If a big map lags like that, a list you loaded last year lags more.

What to re-check, and how often

Open or closed. This matters most, because a closed business turns every other field into noise. Re-check the whole list on a schedule, and before any campaign.
Opening hours. These change with seasons and holidays. Re-check the places your users actually visit or call.
Phone, website, socials. These change less often, but when they break you lose the contact.

Re-check with an API

The VOYGR Enrich API returns current values with a confidence score and an as_of date, so you can tell a fresh value from an old one:

curl https://api.voygr.tech/v1/enrich \ --request POST \ --header "X-API-Key: $VOYGR_API_KEY" \ --header "Content-Type: application/json" \ --data '{ "poi_name": "Example Bakery", "address": "123 Example Street", "country": "US", "attributes": ["open_closed", "opening_hours", "phone", "website"] }'

These standard attributes cost one credit per business however many you request. For a big list, send a batch job of up to 10,000 places and write the results back next to your own IDs.

If you only need open or closed, POST /v1/validate returns operational_status.status (open, closed, unknown, not_exists), plus a closure_reason for closed results. The check_closed_stores example runs that over a CSV.

When the web doesn't know yet

A business can change its hours or close before any website or listing says so. For places where unknown isn't good enough, PlaceCall phones the business and asks:

{ "target_phone": "+1XXXXXXXXXX", "brief": "Ask whether the store is still open and what its hours are this week.", "language": "en" }

The phone has its own trap. In our test, one closed restaurant chain's line still answered "for store hours, please press one" weeks after its website said every location had closed. Treat a menu that answers as weak evidence, and a person who answers as strong evidence.