For a multi-location brand, a location’s Google Business Profile is consulted before the website: it is where the customer sees the photos, the opening hours, the rating and the displayed reviews before deciding whether to make the trip.

The question is usually asked about a single store. It plays out differently for a network, because a network does not have one listing, it has forty.

What happens before the customer reaches your website

Someone searches for your type of business near them. Google shows three locations on a map. They open the closest one, check the rating, read the two or three displayed reviews, check the closing time, enlarge a photo. At that exact moment, they have already decided.

If they then click through to your website, it is to confirm, not to choose. Often they do not click at all: they tap Directions or Call.

The website is still necessary. It carries the full offer, the location pages and the brand’s search visibility. It is simply no longer the first point of contact.

The budget goes to the site, the decision happens on the listing

In most networks, the website has an annual budget, a vendor, an owner and a redesign schedule. The listing for the Rimouski location has none of that.

The result shows up everywhere: a freshly redesigned site, and a listing still showing last year’s holiday hours. The gap does not come from a lack of resources. It comes from the listing belonging to no one on the org chart.

What changes when you manage forty listings instead of one

A single store maintains its listing by hand. A network cannot, for reasons of scale:

1. holiday hours have to change everywhere, in the same week
2. a new location has to exist on Google before it opens
3. reviews land on forty listings at the same time
4. the same location can appear twice without anyone noticing
5. the banner name has to be spelled the same way from one city to the next

Taken one at a time, none of these tasks is complicated. Across forty locations, they become impossible to keep up without a single place to do them.

What every listing needs to carry

Accurate hours, holidays included. Recent photos. A reply to every review, including the positive ones. The same banner name everywhere. A phone number that rings at the location and not at head office. An address identical to the one on the website.

It is a short list. It becomes a project when there are forty locations and no one is accountable.