A dental group opens a new practice. The receptionist creates a Business Profile from a personal Gmail account, the marketing manager adds the new town to the original profile's name, and the owner asks why the first practice has slipped in the map pack. Each move was a mistake. Google's Guidelines for representing your business on Google allow one profile for each real location, and the fixes below follow from that rule.
What the guidelines allow
A profile belongs to a physical location where staff meet customers during stated hours. A second branch with its own door and staff gets its own profile. A town you serve from the first branch doesn't qualify, and neither does a storage unit or a mailbox address. The guidelines also say you shouldn't create more than one profile for a location, even across different accounts.
Service-area businesses follow the same logic. One profile covers the area you travel to, and Google's guidelines suggest that area shouldn't stretch much further than about two hours' driving time from the business's base. If you have two real depots, you get two profiles. If one depot covers two regions, you get one profile with both regions listed as service areas, which Service-area businesses walks through.
Google documents two exceptions. A department the public treats as separate, with its own staff and phone number, can have a profile. So can an individual practitioner such as a dentist or solicitor, who can hold one under their own name alongside the practice. Anything else counts as a duplicate, one of the breaches covered in Profile mistakes that get you suspended.
Why well-run branches don't compete
Google's help page on improving your local ranking says distance and prominence work alongside relevance. Distance is measured from the searcher, or from the place named in the search, to each candidate business. Your northern branch is the closer candidate for someone searching from the north of the city, and your southern branch is closer for someone in the south. Each profile serves a different set of searchers.
Trouble starts when Google can't tell your branches apart. A shared central phone number, the same website URL and identical stock photos on two profiles make them look like one business listed twice, and Google may treat one as a duplicate. Reviews attach to a profile rather than a brand, so a new branch starts with none and borrows nothing from the flagship's prominence.
Make each profile unmistakably its own place.
- Give each branch its own address, hours and photos taken on site.
- Use a phone number that rings at that branch. Google's guidelines ask for a number that reaches the individual location as directly as possible, so a central call centre line works against you.
- Point each profile's website field at that branch's own page on your site. Google doesn't require it, but matching details between profile and page help confirm the location is real.
- Ask each branch for its own reviews and reply from the branch, so prominence builds where the customers are.
Keep the brand consistent and the details distinct
The guidelines ask chains to use the same name at every location unless the real-world branding genuinely differs, and to use the same category wherever the same service is offered. Your name is "Northfield Dental" at every practice. The town goes in the address field and never in the name.
Sort every field into one of two piles. Name, primary category, description and logo are brand-level, so they match across all profiles. Address, phone, hours, photos and attributes such as parking or step-free access are branch-level, and so are the services offered at that site. A branch that doesn't do implants shouldn't list them because head office does.
Apply the same split to every directory listing: one name everywhere, and each branch's own address and phone exactly as they appear on its profile. NAP consistency and citations covers the audit.
Larger groups have a shortcut. Google's Business Profile help documents bulk verification for businesses with ten or more locations, run from a spreadsheet where each site has a unique store code. The guidelines say a store code must never appear in the business name.
Run every profile from one account
Ownership goes wrong quietly. A profile created by branch staff on a personal account leaves when the person does. Hold every profile under a company-owned Google account, and give branch managers the manager role rather than owner so you can always revoke access.
Then give the set a routine.
- One person owns the brand-level fields and changes them everywhere at once.
- Each branch manager owns the branch-level fields, answers that branch's reviews and posts its photos.
- Every month, someone opens each profile and looks for edits you didn't make. Google accepts suggested edits from the public and from its own data sources, so changed hours or a swapped category can go live unnoticed.
- When a branch moves, update the existing profile's address. When one closes, mark it permanently closed, which Google documents, rather than deleting it. The reviews stay attached and searchers see the truth.
Frequently asked questions
Can one business have more than one Google Business Profile?
Yes, when it has more than one real location where staff meet customers during stated hours. Each location gets one profile and no more. A town you only serve, a mailbox address or a partner's shop doesn't qualify, and duplicates risk suspension.
Will my locations compete with each other in the map pack?
Mostly they won't. Google measures distance from the searcher to each profile, so each branch is the nearest version of your business for different searchers. Competition appears when two profiles share a phone number, website page and photos, because Google may read them as one business listed twice.
Should I add the town to each branch's business name?
No. Google's guidelines ask chains to use the same name at every location unless the real-world branding differs. Put the town in the address field, and keep store codes out of the name as well.
Who should own the profiles?
A company-owned Google account should own every profile. Add branch managers with the manager role so they can edit and reply to reviews, and the business keeps the power to remove them. Profiles created on personal accounts tend to disappear when the person leaves.
What to take away
- Google allows one profile per real, staffed location. Served towns, mailboxes and partner premises don't qualify, and duplicates get profiles suspended.
- Branches stop competing once Google can tell them apart. Each is the nearest version of you for a different set of searchers, and reviews and prominence build per profile.
- Brand-level fields stay identical everywhere. Branch-level fields such as address, phone, hours, photos and services are true for one site only.
- Keep every profile under a company account, with one owner for brand fields, a manager per branch and a monthly check for edits you didn't make.
Next
Each profile now points at a page of its own. The next lesson builds those pages at scale without the duplicate-content trap: Scaling location pages.