Is Google Maps accurate for closed businesses? We checked 400 places

Originally published on voygr.tech.

Short answer - not always. Google Maps is probably the best map out there, but it is still far from ground truth for whether a business is open. So we checked it properly.

• 400 US places tested
• 93 marked closed by VOYGR
• 23 : 3 disputed closures, verified in our favor
• 27% of the 86 closures still open or missing on Google Maps

How we tested

1. Took 400 random US places from Overture Maps, the open map dataset.
2. Ran them through the VOYGR Enrich API, asking for open_closed and existence - whether each business is still operating at its address. It marked 93 as closed.
3. Looked up how each of the 93 appeared in its public Google Maps listing (August 2026).
4. Where the listing disagreed with us, verified each place by hand with independent sources - the business’s own website, registries, obituaries, relocation notices - and, where needed, a call to the listed number with PlaceCall.

What Google Maps showed for our 93 closures

So the listing agreed with us on 63 places and disagreed on 30.

Who was right on the 30 disputes

17 closures were confirmed by independent sources and 6 by phone - a person confirmed it, or the number was disconnected. Phone lines alone can mislead: one closed restaurant chain still answers “for store hours, please press one” weeks after announcing on its own website that every location had closed.

Across all 93 places we marked closed: 86 closed (92%) - 63 where the Google Maps listing agreed with us, plus 23 we verified independently - 3 wrong and 4 unresolved. So 23 of those 86 closures still showed as open or missing on Google Maps.

Honest caveat - this test checks the closures we flagged. We did not separately re-check the 63 closures where the Google Maps listing agreed with us, and we did not measure closures we missed among the other 307 places, so it is not a full accuracy score. Google Maps listings change over time; the statuses above are what the listings showed when we checked in August 2026.

VOYGR Enrich API

The API behind step 2. Business status is one of many fields it returns for each place you send:

• Open or closed: open_closed returns open, closed, unknown or not_exists, and existence scores whether the place is real
• Custom attributes: Describe any field in plain English and pick a type - bool, enum, string or number
• Contacts and socials: Phone, email, website, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok
• Opening hours: Current hours, researched from the web
• Owners and key people: Names and roles, with optional contact details
• Confidence and freshness: Every answer comes with a confidence and an as_of date

Standard and custom attributes in one request:

{ "poi_name": "Example Bakery", "address": "123 Example Street", "country": "US", "attributes": [ "open_closed", "opening_hours", "phone", { "name": "outdoor_seating", "description": "Does the place have outdoor seating?", "value_type": "bool" } ] } 

Get a free API key · Read the Enrich API docs

PlaceCall

The API behind step 4. It gives your app or AI agent a phone:

• Real phone calls: Send a US phone number and a plain-language task, and an AI voice agent places the call
• Menus and hold: The agent works through phone trees and waits on hold for you
• Structured result: Every call returns an outcome summary, the full transcript and a recording
• Mid-call questions: When the agent needs a decision, it asks you through a stream or a webhook
• Live status: Track each call as it moves from queued to dialing, in progress and completed
• Pay for results: Calls that fail or never reach a real conversation cost nothing

One request places a real call:

{ "target_phone": "+15551234567", "brief": "Ask whether the store is still open and what time it closes today.", "language": "en" } 

Try PlaceCall · Read the PlaceCall docs

Keys are free to start, so try both on your own list - we would love to hear what you find. And if you are curious how AI assistants handle closed places, our LLM local search benchmark found all seven model configurations giving booking advice for a Buenos Aires restaurant that had already closed.

FAQ

Why do closed businesses still show as open on Google Maps?

Closures are easy to miss, because the signals around a closed business can keep looking alive. In our test, one closed chain's phone line still answered with its usual menu weeks after the company announced on its own website that every location had closed.

How do you check if a business is permanently closed?

Look for independent evidence: a closure notice on the business's own website, a registry or obituary record, a relocation notice, or a disconnected phone line. When the evidence conflicts, call the business. To do this at scale, the VOYGR Enrich API returns an open_closed status (open, closed, unknown or not_exists) for each place you send.

Can the Enrich API check thousands of places at once?

Yes. The VOYGR Enrich API takes batch jobs of up to 10,000 places at a time.

Which phone numbers can PlaceCall call?

PlaceCall calls US phone numbers. It does not call businesses located in Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana or Nebraska, whatever number they list, and it refuses numbers with those states' area codes. English works best, and twelve other languages are supported on a best-effort basis.