You drive fifteen minutes to a place that said it was open. The lights are off. There's a handwritten sign on the door. This happens to everyone, and it's not really Google's fault.
Business hours online aren't measured. Nobody is checking whether the door is unlocked. They're typed in by the business owner, usually once, often years ago, and then left alone.
Sometimes other sources fill them in — a listing from a directory, information scraped from the business's own website, or suggestions submitted by users. Those can be stale too.
So "Open now" really means "according to a schedule someone entered at some point, this should be open." That's usually right. It's wrong often enough to be worth a phone call.
The more it would cost you to arrive at a locked door, the more it's worth a 20-second phone call first.
This is by far the biggest failure mode. Regular weekly hours are usually accurate. Holiday hours require the owner to remember to set a special schedule, and most don't. The day before and after a holiday are nearly as bad.
A one-person barber shop or a family restaurant closes when someone's sick, when there's a family event, or when it's slow. None of that reaches the internet. Chains and larger operations have staff whose job includes keeping listings current.
A restaurant listed as open until midnight may stop serving food at 10:30. The bar stays open. If you're going specifically to eat, "open" and "still cooking" are different questions.
New businesses, businesses that just moved, and businesses under new ownership all tend to have listings that lag behind reality by months.
Anywhere with summer hours, winter hours, or a slow season. The listing frequently shows whichever schedule was entered most recently, regardless of the current month.
Some listings are well maintained, and there are tells:
Before any trip you'd be annoyed to waste:
Calling feels old-fashioned and it remains the single most reliable method available. A human answering the phone is proof the door is open.
MyTopRate shows the open/closed status Google reports, and the "Open now only" filter uses that same data. It's the best information available through the API, and it comes with all the caveats above — we're passing along what Google has, not independently verifying that anyone unlocked the door this morning.
That's why the filter is a toggle rather than something applied automatically. Sometimes you'd rather see a great place that's closed right now and go tomorrow, than settle for a mediocre one that happens to be open.
Use "Open now only" to narrow things down when you're heading out immediately. Turn it off when you're planning ahead — otherwise you're hiding good options for no reason.