Should each location have its own Google Business Profile?
Short answer
Yes, if each location is a real place your company operates from, with its own staff during its stated hours. One profile per real, staffed location is the principle. A city you only drive to isn't a location, and a profile at a virtual office or a mailbox breaks Google's rules and risks suspension.
Yes, each location should have its own Google Business Profile, as long as it’s a real place your company operates from with its own staff. One profile per real, staffed location is the principle. The harder question for most home-service companies is what counts as a location, because a city you send trucks to isn’t one.
What counts as a location
Your own people have to work from the place during the hours you’d publish for it. A plain test: if someone showed up at that address on a weekday, would they find your staff, your vehicles or your stock there?
Take a hypothetical plumbing company with its shop in Kearny Mesa and a second yard in Escondido, where the North County crew picks up vans and parts each morning. That’s two locations. The same company with one shop in Kearny Mesa and customers in Escondido has one location and a service area.
Google’s guidelines set out eligibility in more detail, and the wording changes. Read the current version before you add a profile. Expect that Google may ask for evidence that the place is real when you verify it.
What doesn’t count
- A virtual office, a mailbox or a rented desk that nobody from your company staffs.
- A friend’s, relative’s or employee’s home, used only to place a pin in another city.
- A storage unit or a lot with no staff.
- A city that is in your service area and nothing more.
- A second profile at an address you already have a profile for, such as one for plumbing and another for drain cleaning under the same company.
The first three break Google’s rules (a virtual office address included), and a profile built on one can be suspended, sometimes along with the company’s legitimate profile. The last one is simply a duplicate profile.
One base and many cities
A company with one base needs one profile, with the cities it travels to listed as its service area during service area setup. That list tells customers where you work. It doesn’t give you a presence in each city, which is why the idea of extra profiles is tempting.
The honest ways to reach cities you have no base in begin on your website, with pages about the work you do there. The others are reviews from customers in those cities and paid placement where the map results stay out of reach.
What a new profile starts with
Even a well-known company gets a new profile with no reviews and no history. Reviews can’t be copied from your first profile. So a second profile is a new listing that has to earn its place among companies that have been established in that area for years, and your reputation doesn’t come attached.
That’s worth knowing before you sign a lease. If the second location makes sense for dispatch and drive time, and you can staff it, the profile is a benefit that comes with it. If the only reason for the address is the pin, the cost of running a real location usually outweighs what the pin returns, and a faked one puts your first profile in danger.
If you do have several real locations
Each profile then needs its own phone number, its own hours, its own page on your website and its own reviews, and all of them should sit under one account your company controls. Setting up multi-location profiles so they don’t compete with each other is its own piece of work.