Managing the Google Business Profiles of a company with several locations is first and foremost a governance question. Until you name someone responsible for updating a profile, it will not be updated.

Three models for managing local profiles can work, provided someone is named.

The problem is not technical

The franchisee assumes head office handles it. Head office assumes the location is responsible for it. Nobody does it, and too often the profile falls through the cracks.

The local profile is the one brand asset a company routinely leaves without a declared owner, even though more customers see it than see the website.

Three governance models, and what each one assumes

Centralized at head office.

Head office holds all the access and manages the profiles from a dedicated platform. Maximum consistency in naming, categories and tone of replies. Assumes a dedicated team and a fast channel between the location and head office, so that a change of opening hours is published the same day.

Independent franchisee.

Each merchant manages their own profile, which gives the best local responsiveness. This model can also rely on a dedicated platform. Managed in isolation, without a tool and without a framework, it almost always produces name inconsistencies, empty fields and unanswered reviews, because the profile comes after running the store.

Hybrid.

A platform lets head office hold the access, the reply templates and the brand data, while the location supplies what is genuinely local, the opening hours and the photos. A named person at head office remains accountable for the whole. This is the most common and the most solid model in companies with several locations.

What the absence of an owner produces

In September 2026 we opened 51 Google Business Profiles across seven hardware and home improvement banners in Quebec, none of them a Lanla client. On each one we looked at the three reviews Google displays by default, the ones a customer actually sees. Across the 153 reviews examined, half had no reply from the merchant.

From one banner to the next, the reply rate runs from 96% to 0%. On a third of the profiles, none of the displayed reviews has a reply. Same sector, same week, same tools: what changes from one banner to the next is whether someone is accountable, or nobody is.

We also found one location present twice on Google, at the same address and with the same phone number. One of those two profiles carried 301 reviews, the other 6. Customers who landed on the second saw a business with almost no history.

Survey of 1 to 4 September 2026. n = 51 profiles, 153 displayed reviews, 7 banners. Margin of error about 14 points on the average. Google sorts displayed reviews by relevance, not by date. No banner is named.

Four questions to ask yourself about your Google Business Profiles

1. Who updates the holiday opening hours, and against which list of locations?
2. Who replies to reviews, and within what timeframe?
3. Who holds the access, and what happens when that person leaves?
4. Who corrects an edit suggested by a stranger and published automatically by Google?

If the four answers do not name someone responsible, your Google Business Profile is unfortunately not being managed.