Google Business Profile for Multi-Location Firms: The Setup Most Get Wrong

Most multi-location professional services firms have Google Business Profiles. Most of them are set up wrong, actively managed by nobody, and generating a fraction of the enquiries they should be.

This is not a complicated problem. Google Business Profile is not a technically demanding platform. The setup mistakes that cost firms the most are not obscure — they are the same errors repeated across hundreds of practices, and almost all of them can be corrected in an afternoon.

The issue is that most firms approach their GBP the way they approach a directory listing: fill it in once and forget about it. That approach produces a profile that looks legitimate at a glance but performs poorly in local search, because Google rewards profiles that are actively maintained, locally specific, and genuinely useful to the people searching in that area.

What follows covers the setup mistakes that matter most, in the order that matters most to fix them.

The foundational error: one profile for the whole firm

Some multi-location practices have a single Google Business Profile that lists the firm rather than individual profiles for each location. The address on the profile is the head office. The phone number goes to a central line. The name is the brand name with no location identifier.

This is the most expensive GBP mistake a multi-location firm can make, and it is surprisingly common.

A single profile cannot rank in local searches for multiple locations simultaneously. When someone in Harrogate searches for an independent financial adviser, Google is looking for a business with a verified presence in Harrogate — a specific address, a local phone number, reviews from clients in that area. A profile that lists a Leeds head office address does not satisfy that intent, regardless of how well-optimised it is.

Every location that trades with the public, takes client appointments, and has a physical address should have its own Google Business Profile. Each profile is a separate local asset. Each one can rank in its own area. Each one accumulates its own reviews. Each one builds its own local authority independently of the others.

If this is not already the case, creating individual profiles for each location is the starting point for everything else in this article.

Category selection: the decision most get half-right

When setting up a GBP, the primary category is the most important single field. It tells Google what kind of business this is and determines which searches the profile is eligible to appear in.

The mistake is choosing a category that is accurate but too broad. "Financial Services" is accurate for an IFA practice. It is also the category shared by insurance brokers, mortgage advisers, accountants, and dozens of other business types. The more specific category — "Independent Financial Adviser" or "Financial Planner" — signals precisely what the practice does and reduces competition within the category.

Most GBP setups also allow secondary categories. These are worth using carefully. A practice that also offers mortgage advice or pension planning can add relevant secondary categories that expand the searches the profile is eligible to appear in, without diluting the primary signal.

The category selection should also be reviewed periodically. Google adds and modifies available categories regularly, and a category that was the best available option two years ago may have been superseded by a more specific one.

The name field: more common an error than it should be

The business name on a Google Business Profile should match the legal or trading name of the business exactly, with one addition: for multi-location firms, the location name is typically appended to distinguish profiles.

"Thornfield Financial" becomes "Thornfield Financial — Harrogate" and "Thornfield Financial — Bradford." Each profile is identifiably distinct. The location is in the name. When that profile appears in search results or on Google Maps, the user immediately knows which office they are looking at.

The errors here tend to go in two directions. Some firms use the same name across all profiles, making it impossible for a user to distinguish one location from another in search results. Others stuff the name field with keywords — "Thornfield Financial Independent Financial Adviser Retirement Planning Harrogate" — which is against Google's guidelines and creates a profile that looks untrustworthy rather than established.

The name field is not a keyword field. It is a name field. The optimisation happens elsewhere.

The address and phone number: the consistency problem

Every GBP profile should have a complete, accurate, and consistent address and phone number. Consistent means identical — not approximately the same — across the GBP, the website location page, every directory the firm appears in, and every other online mention.

"1 Park Row" and "One Park Row" are different to a search algorithm even if they are the same address. "0113 123 4567" and "+441131234567" are different formats of the same number but may be read as different data points. These inconsistencies, multiplied across dozens of directory listings and the firm's own website, actively reduce local search authority.

The phone number on each location's GBP should also be the direct number for that location, not a central switchboard or a number that routes to a national answering service. Google prioritises profiles that are locally specific, and a local phone number is part of that specificity signal.

Photos: the signal most practices underestimate

A Google Business Profile with no photos — or with only a logo — performs worse in local search than one with a complete photo set. This is not an aesthetic preference. It is a ranking signal. Google uses engagement data from profiles to determine how relevant and trustworthy they are, and profiles with photos receive significantly more views and clicks than those without.

For each location, the photo set should include: the exterior of the building (so prospective clients can identify it on arrival), the interior reception or meeting area (so the environment feels familiar before the first visit), and at least one or two images of the team at that office.

The photos should be taken at each individual location, not stock images and not photos of the head office applied to all profiles. A client searching for the Skipton office and seeing photos that are obviously of a different building in a different town is not reassured by what they find.

Photos should also be added on an ongoing basis. Profiles that receive new photos regularly signal active management, which is itself a positive input into local ranking.

The Q&A section: managed or unmanaged

Every Google Business Profile has a public Q&A section. Anyone can post a question. Anyone can post an answer — including people who are not associated with the business.

Most professional services firms have never looked at this section. Some of them have unanswered questions sitting there from two years ago. A small number have had questions answered by third parties with information that is inaccurate or unhelpful.

The Q&A section should be audited for each location. Existing questions should be answered by the practice. A set of common questions — what services do you offer, is there parking, are you taking new clients, what areas do you cover — can be pre-populated by the practice itself to ensure the information is accurate and useful.

This is a 20-minute task per location. It is almost never done.

Posts: the signal that separates active from dormant

Google Business Profile allows practices to publish posts — short updates, event announcements, service highlights, and similar content — that appear on the profile and, in some cases, in search results.

The posts themselves are a minor direct ranking signal. Their real value is as an activity signal. A profile that publishes regular posts tells Google that someone is actively managing this presence and that the business is current and operational. A profile with no posts in six months reads as dormant, regardless of how well-optimised the static fields are.

For multi-location practices, posts can serve a dual purpose. A post about a seminar at the Harrogate office is locally specific content that reinforces the geographic relevance of that particular profile. A post that explains a recent regulatory change in plain language is useful content that prospective clients may actually read.

One post per month per location is a reasonable minimum. It does not need to be long. It needs to exist.

Reviews: the pillar that everything else supports

A well-optimised GBP with no reviews is significantly less effective than a less optimised profile with 80. Reviews are the Trust pillar signal, and they are also a direct input into local search rankings — particularly into the map pack, the three-result display that appears above the organic search results for most local queries.

The review generation process is covered in more depth in [Why Your Existing Client Base Is Your Most Overlooked Growth Asset], but the GBP-specific point is this: reviews need to accumulate at each individual profile, not at a brand level. The Harrogate profile needs Harrogate reviews. A review that attaches to the wrong profile, or to no profile, does not build the local authority of the location that needs it.

Every location should have a direct review link — the shortened URL that takes a client straight to the review prompt for that specific profile. That link should be in the adviser's email signature, in any post-meeting follow-up, and in the onboarding communications for new clients.

The management question

The most common GBP failure in multi-location practices is not any single setup error. It is the absence of ongoing management.

A profile that was set up correctly two years ago and has not been touched since is, in practice, a profile that has been allowed to drift. Information becomes outdated. Competitors pull ahead on reviews. The Q&A section accumulates unanswered questions. Posts stop appearing. The profile gradually becomes less competitive without anyone noticing, because nobody is watching.

Each location's GBP needs an owner — someone who is responsible for keeping it accurate, monitoring it for questions and reviews, publishing monthly posts, and flagging when something has changed. In smaller practices this is often the office manager. In larger ones it may sit with a marketing coordinator. The important thing is that it is assigned, not assumed.

For practices without the internal capacity to manage this across multiple locations, it is one of the more straightforward things to delegate to a specialist. But it should not be invisible — the principal should be able to ask at any point how each location's profile is performing and receive a specific answer.

If you want to understand how your current GBP setup compares across all your locations — and where the gaps are costing you most — the [Location Leverage Diagnostic] gives you a scored assessment across all four pillars in around 15 minutes.

Seb Dziubek is the founder of Rhetoric Studios, an organic growth consultancy for multi-location professional services firms. He works with IFA practices and law firms building local search visibility — location by location.

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