SEO for retailers: physical shops win on the map (and on bank holiday hours)

Spoiler: "hardware store near me" gets 90,500 searches a month. And on "hardware shop london" two of the three places in the map go to independent shops.

A physical shop has to beat Amazon on Google, right?

No.

Product searches are won by online shops, and it's a game the shop round the corner shouldn't bother playing.

The physical shop wins on a different question: "where can I find it, near me, open now".

And Google answers that question with the map, opening hours and shops' own pages.

The numbers are clear (DataForSEO data, Google Ads, United Kingdom, October 2026):

• "hardware store near me": 90,500 searches a month, peaking at 110,000 in July and August 2026;
• "shopping centre near me": 90,500;
• "opticians near me": 40,500;
• "B&Q opening times": 49,500.

These are searches made by people who want to leave the house and walk into a shop.

Yet the mistakes we see are always the same:

• a Google profile set up years ago and never touched again, with no bank holiday hours;
• a brochure website with a single "About us" page and no departments, no brands, no address in plain text;
• a chain with a "Stores" page that lists every shop in one table.

That's where this article comes from.

And why should you listen to us?

Because we know the physical shop's problem first hand. Contesini Consulenze has two branches in the province of Mantua, in Italy, where households and small businesses go to compare electricity and gas deals. Before the project those branches were the only channel, and sales followed footfall in the town centre and the seasons.

We built landing pages, tracking and campaigns from scratch, focused on the area around the two branches.

In seven months: 299 enquiries at €7.20 each, and 68% judged workable by the sales team.

Here you'll find:

• who actually holds the first page of a real local search (and with what rating);
• the bank holiday calendar that makes searches for opening times explode;
• how to show the products you have in store on Google, at no cost;
• what a chain needs so it doesn't disappear behind its own head office.

Let's start with the map.

On the map the local shop holds its own against the chains (on "hardware shop london" two of the three places go to independents)

On 10 October 2026 we read the first page of "hardware shop london" on a smartphone, with the location set to London.

B&Q? Screwfix? Wickes?

None of them.

At the top there's the local pack with two independent shops and one branch of a chain:

1. Waterloo Home & Hardware on Lower Marsh: 4.7 stars and 69 reviews;
2. W1 Hardware and DIY on Great Portland Street: 4.8 and 124;
3. Robert Dyas on St Martin's Lane: 4.4 and 57.

Above it, a "Find results on" row with Yell, Yelp and MapQuest.

Of the nine organic results, four are hardware shops' own websites: a Robert Dyas store page (Gracechurch Street), Holborn Hardware, Dulwich DIY and Windsor Hardware, which is in Windsor, not London. Four are directories and maps: Yell, Yelp, Apple Maps and Yandex. The ninth is belsizehardware.co.uk, a former hardware shop's domain that now shows a page about a hotel.

No marketplace. No Amazon. There's a block of questions, but they're generic ("Is Screwfix a hardware store?").

It's a SERP (Google's results page) that a shop with a decent website can take.

Hang on: the first shop in the map has fewer reviews than the second?

Yes. And it's the most useful detail on the whole page.

In the local pack, reviews aren't an entry ticket. What counts is the right category on the profile, the name and the distance from the person searching: the search was set to London, and Lower Marsh is right behind Waterloo station.

The rating does decide who gets the click out of the three, though. And a 4.4 next to a 4.8 usually loses the comparison.

Hardware, by the way, is one of the biggest categories we measured (only "bike shop near me" is bigger, at 135,000):

• "hardware store": 27,100 searches a month;
• "hardware shop london": 880;
• "hardware store manchester": 260.

And look at what a hardware shop in SW8 puts in its Yell snippet: "a large range of hand and power tools" in store and "up to 25,000" products online.

Two facts you can check. Exactly what a customer wants to know before crossing the city.

Opening hours are a keyword (and on Boxing Day they're worth 40,500 searches)

People searching for a chain often want to know one thing only: when it's open.

• "B&Q opening times": 49,500 searches a month;
• "Argos opening times" and "IKEA opening times": 60,500 and 40,500;
• "Currys opening times": 27,100, peaking at 49,500 in December.

And on bank holidays?

On bank holidays everything multiplies.

"Shops open today" averages 6,600 searches a month. In April 2026, the month of Easter, it got 27,100. In December 2025, 22,200. In January, 14,800.

Searches with the day in them are even more concentrated…

"Shops open boxing day" and "what shops are open on boxing day" reach 40,500 each in December alone. "Shops open easter sunday" hit 74,000 in April. "Shops open on christmas day" 14,800 in December, "shops open new years day" 12,100 in December and again in January. "Shops open bank holiday monday" 2,900 in May and 1,600 in April and August. In England and Wales there's a legal reason: shops over 280 square metres must close on Easter Sunday and Christmas Day, and on other Sundays can open for only six consecutive hours between 10am and 6pm (GOV.UK). Scotland has no trading hours restrictions.

For the rest of the year, almost nothing.

Search	Monthly searches (average)	CPC (£)	Peak month	Searches at peak
bike shop near me	135,000	0.39	May, July and August 2026	201,000
hardware store near me	90,500	0.42	July and August 2026	110,000
shopping centre near me	90,500	0.43	August 2026	135,000
opticians near me	40,500	3.50	January and August 2026	49,500
toy shop near me	40,500	0.39	December 2025	60,500
shoe shops near me	33,100	0.32	August 2026	49,500
perfume shop near me	12,100	0.97	December 2025	27,100
shops open today	6,600	0.14	April 2026	27,100
shops open easter sunday	6,600	n/a	April 2026	74,000
shops open boxing day	3,600	n/a	December 2025	40,500
shops open new years day	1,900	n/a	December 2025 and January 2026	12,100
shops open on christmas day	1,300	0.93	December 2025	14,800

Your website doesn't answer these searches. Your Google profile does, because next to the shop's name it says "open" or "closed" and when it opens again.

Now picture the scene.

On Boxing Day you're open. Your profile says "closed".

The customer goes elsewhere without even opening your website. And you'll never know you lost them.

Special hours for bank holidays go into the profile a few weeks ahead, one by one. We explain how in our guide to the Google Business Profile.

Every category has its month

The calendar is clear-cut:

• bike shops: "bike shop near me" goes from 90,500 in winter to 201,000 in May, July and August;
• perfume and toy shops: peak in December (27,100 and 60,500);
• shoes: peak in August (49,500), just before the schools go back.

The month before the peak is when to update the profile's photos, products and posts. Not the peak month: by then it's too late.

In-store availability isn't searched for, it's shown (50 searches a month, yet everyone wants it)

"In store availability" gets 50 searches a month. "Check stock in store", 480.

So nobody cares?

Quite the opposite. Nobody types those words because they expect Google to tell them.

People search for the product, often with "near me", and want to know where to find it.

Google does this with Merchant Center's cost-free local listings, available in the UK: the products you have in store, with price and availability, appear at no cost to people searching for them nearby.

What you need:

• a product list with stock levels for each store;
• exported from your stock system, or uploaded from a spreadsheet.

Think of the 25,000 products that SW8 hardware shop mentions on Yell.

Without local product listings, that shop gets found on a single word: "hardware". With them, on each of those 25,000 products.

The same principle applies to your website.

One page for each department or brand you stock, with the line "available in our shop on … Street" and the address, picks up searches that the Google profile alone doesn't cover.

A chain needs one page per shop (not a "Stores" table)

For a chain, the work multiplies by the number of shops.

Each shop needs its own Google profile and its own page on the website, with:

• address;
• opening hours and bank holiday hours;
• services (click and collect, returns, parking);
• content that only exists there.

Sounds like overkill?

People searching "B&Q opening times" (49,500 searches a month) want the hours of the shop near them. Not those of the whole country. On "hardware shop london" Robert Dyas shows how it works: its St Martin's Lane listing in the map links to that shop's own page, and another shop page (Gracechurch Street) ranks among the organic results.

Then there's keeping name, address and phone number consistent across the profile, the website and directories such as Yell, which also appears on page one of "hardware shop london". It's explained in our guide to local citations.

If the chain is a network of franchisees, managing the profiles has extra rules: they're in our guide to SEO for franchise networks.

And local advertising? It lives on boundaries

This brings us back to Contesini.

Two branches, a modest budget, no campaigns ever run before.

We worked in this order: first the landing page and tracking, then Performance Max campaigns focused on the area around the two branches.

Why that order?

Because sending visits to a page that doesn't convert is the quickest way to conclude that Google Ads doesn't work.

And because for a local business every click from outside the area is a wasted click: a €7 enquiry from someone who isn't local is worth nothing.

The result: 299 enquiries in seven months, two in three workable.

For a shop in the UK the starting costs are low too: in the table above most local clicks cost between £0.32 and £0.97, with opticians the exception at £3.50.

Recommended reading: how Google's local pack works.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start (today, not in December)

Not product searches, but "near me" and "open today".

Not the highest rating, but the right category and the distance.

Not a "Stores" table, but one page per shop.

Not the peak month, but the one before.

Now, two concrete things.

One: open your Google profile and check the special hours for the next bank holidays. If they're missing, add them today. In December 2025 "shops open boxing day" got 40,500 searches.

Two: step outside, stand in front of your window and search for your category followed by "near me". Look at who appears in the map, and with what rating.

If you don't like what you see, start with our SEO consultancy service or book a strategy consultation.

Until next time!