Apple is making totally sure that it delivers the best navigation experience for its users that it can, and if that means forcibly closing some businesses, so be it. If Apple has any lack of confidence that the information it presents its users is accurate, it is finding it better to simply remove the option from its local listing directory altogether. Rather than risking sending Apple customers to a business during off hours or sending them to the wrong address, it is not sending those leads there at all, marking the listing as permanently closed unless those businesses update their Apple Maps information.

The ability to “set it and forget it” on Apple Maps is going away. Those that do not fill in all required fields, such as hours of operation, are being marked as permanently closed. Setting those hours within Apple Maps would be easy enough to do once but Apple is also now comparing its listing information to other directories. If a business has a conflicting address, phone number, holiday hours, or anything else compared to Google Maps, Facebook, Yelp, etcetera, it is still being marked as permanently closed on Apple’s directory.

To ensure the health of your business’s Apple listing, it is now a matter of not just looking at Apple but making sure your citations on all parts of the online ecosystem are up to date. Apple is a huge player in the online maps space and if you want to make sure you still appear there, you better be making sure you’re also keeping your listings accurate everywhere else!