Google Reviews for Chains and Multiple Locations

A table of locations sorted by stars is the quickest way to punish a new manager for their predecessor's mistakes. The average on Google carries the whole history of the profile, so a location that has just changed teams can look worse than the rest for a long time, even if customers are happier today. Before you start comparing locations, you need to know two things: who has access to each profile, and who is responsible for what ends up in the reviews.

Head office sets the rules, the location knows the customer

Start one table, one row per location: profile link, who is the owner, who is the manager, who deals with reviews and who covers for them. "Marketing" is not an answer. Filling it in may show that nobody at head office has access to some location, because a former manager once created the profile on their own Gmail. The record should also hold the address, verification status and a contact for serious complaints.

Head office decides what the profiles are called, who has access, what the sign at the counter looks like and what a manager may promise in a reply. Can a barber offer a free re-cut, or only an apology? The location, in turn, knows what actually happened during the visit. When head office replies, it writes blind without that information.

A location manager does not have to be the owner of the profile. According to Google's help page on owners and managers, the owner has full control of the profile. A manager has most of the owner's permissions but cannot add or remove users or delete the profile. That still means they can rewrite the name, opening hours and photos. With that kind of access a manager already influences whether a customer turns up at the right place at the right time.

For company-owned locations I recommend keeping ownership with head office and giving local managers the manager role if they are to run the profile. Everyone should use their own assigned account. A shared password sent round to managers makes it harder to handle staff leaving and to trace who changed the profile.

For complaints about a manager's behaviour, disputed compensation or anything involving a customer's health, the location has to know exactly who to contact at head office. "Passed to head office" does not help the customer if the message sits there unanswered.

Each location has its own profile, named as on the sign

When head office has no access to a location's profile, it is tempting to create a new one. First find out who manages the original. Google's guidelines for representing your business prohibit multiple profiles for the same location, with specific exceptions such as practitioners or departments. A second profile does not fix missing access.

The profile should carry the name that hangs over the door. If the sign says "XY Bakery", do not put "XY Bakery Leeds – bread, pastries and coffee" in the profile. Add the city only if it is genuinely part of the location's signage. Locations of a chain should use a consistent name unless their real signage differs systematically. For the same service, the category should be consistent as well.

During the check, compare the name with the signage, and verify the address, opening hours and local phone number. Photos should help a customer recognise that particular location. Head office can supply photo guidelines, but the same interior shot on every profile does not help anyone find the right entrance. The setup itself is covered in the guide how to set up your Google Business Profile.

From 10 locations of the same business you can request bulk verification, though duplicate, suspended and disabled profiles do not count towards the required number. The option does not apply to service-area businesses or to agencies managing different businesses in one account. Uploading a spreadsheet does not submit the request by itself: in Business Profile Manager you have to continue to the chain verification section and start the request. Before that, make your records match how the locations actually operate.

With a franchise, agree on management and on leaving the network

A franchisee may have created the profile under their own account long before head office starts looking at reviews. The brand name does not tell you who has access. Go through the real list of owners and managers together with the franchisee. The owner role describes permissions in Google; it does not settle the contractual relationship between the operator and the brand.

As a default arrangement I would suggest head office as owner and the franchisee as manager. It has to match what both sides agree, though. If the franchisee is the owner, they control the profile and its reviews after leaving the network, and head office may never get it back. If ownership is to stay with the franchisee, agree on access for head office and on what it may change.

Include in the franchise agreement brief:

• Which accounts will be owners and managers of the profile, and who approves access changes.
• Who maintains the location's details, replies to reviews and takes over serious complaints.
• How head office may use ratings in internal comparisons and who receives the results.
• What happens to access and profile management when the franchisee leaves, the operator changes or use of the brand ends.

For the last point, spell out who starts the change, who gets the access and who checks that the new manager can actually open the profile. The handover should include an overview of unresolved complaints. A customer in the middle of getting something put right should not discover that the new operator knows nothing about their problem.

Leave the exact wording of the contract to a lawyer, and do not promise in it that reviews will be kept or transferred when the operator changes. Nobody can guarantee that on Google's behalf.

The counter needs the link to the right location

You can prepare the materials in a single design centrally, but the link has to come from the profile of the location in question. In the location's profile, open the reviews section and the option for getting more reviews, where you copy the link or save the QR code. Google supports this way of asking. To create the QR code, use a desktop browser.

A mixed-up shipment is all it takes: the plaque for Leeds ends up in York, and York customers spend weeks reviewing the Leeds bakery. So write the location's address on the back of every plaque. After unpacking it, the manager scans it with a phone and checks that their own profile opens. For shipments abroad, add the plaque's language to the production brief.

Put the plaque or stand where the visit ends and the customer has room to take out a phone. Next to the QR code, say that it leads to a Google review. With an NFC version, show staff where to hold the phone and keep the QR code visible as another option. Where to place it and how to use it is covered in the guide to using an NFC plaque for Google reviews.

A natural sentence is enough for staff. For example:

If you'd like to rate your visit, here's the QR code for a Google review.

The article how to ask for a review the right way covers more situations. Offer the chance to review to every customer on the same terms, for example after a completed visit, without judging how satisfied they are.

In a chain of barbershops it is tempting to run a competition for the most reviews and set every barber a mandatory number. Google's policy prohibits setting employees a review quota and asking customers for specific content, including the staff member's name. You also must not offer a reward or send only happy customers to Google. A questionnaire that diverts unhappy customers only to a private form is prohibited selective gating. You can offer private feedback alongside the review, but filling it in must not decide whether someone gets the link. Check that staff offer it to everyone, and track the number of reviews as an outcome, with no mandatory target for the people serving customers. Opening a new location also brings in the ban on reviews from your own team, covered in why Google reviews from employees are prohibited.

Reply in the language of the review, verify the fix on site

Even a branch in Leeds can be reviewed by a customer writing in Polish. For a network operating in several countries you therefore need, for every language, a person who can judge the content of a reply, plus agreed cover during holidays. Otherwise a foreign-language complaint waits even though the local team already has the solution.

Head office can set shared principles: how to address people, how formal to be and how to offer to continue the conversation outside the public review. But an English template translated into Polish can sound just as impersonal as it did in English, and nobody at head office will notice. So someone who talks to Polish customers every day should read it.

Anyone who opens your locations side by side and finds the same "Thank you for your feedback" under every review recognises a template at once. According to BrightLocal's US survey, template-like replies put off 50% of respondents. For routine thank-yous a location can use templates for replying to positive reviews, but tie the specific reaction to what the customer wrote.

With a complaint, first check the circumstances with the local team. Head office should not promise a refund or a replacement appointment without agreeing it with whoever will deliver the fix. At clinics especially, do not give details of the visit in a public reply just to prove your version of events. The customer needs to know who to contact and what happens next. The procedure for a public response is in the article how to respond to negative reviews.

Compare locations over the same period and allow for operational differences

A difference in stars can come from the team, from how busy the place is, or from the age of the profile. At a new location with few reviews, every additional rating moves the average more. For a regular comparison, then, separate current experience from the history of the profile:

According to BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 74% of respondents look for reviews from the last three months. The survey is American, and we have no UK data for this figure.

A gym in a shopping centre may see more people in a day than a dental practice that works by appointment. So compare the number of new reviews between similar locations. Add footfall to the table if you record it in a comparable way, and note temporary closures, team changes or reduced opening hours. First look at whether the location is doing better than in the previous period.

Reply rate is the share of reviews answered out of all those received in the period. What counts is the status on the day of the check. If a location received no review in a month, the monthly average rating field should hold a dash. A zero would wrongly drag down the network average; in the number of new reviews, on the other hand, it is correct. Calculate the network average from individual reviews, not from the averages of locations. In a summary, a busy location can overshadow the problem of a smaller one, so open its results too.

Weekly: open cases. Monthly: operational changes

Give the weekly check to one named person. They go through new reviews without a reply, complaints waiting for the location's statement and agreed fixes. Every open case should have a next step and a person responsible for it.

If every reply waits several days for approval from marketing, another reminder to managers will not help. Let routine thank-yous go out without approval, and send head office the complaints that need its decision. Why speed matters is covered in the article on how reply speed affects reviews.

At the monthly meeting, read specific reviews before drawing conclusions from the table. Complaints about waiting at a car service centre can lead to a change in how appointments are booked; at a barbershop with complaints about price, it is worth checking whether the customer knows it before the cut. The meeting should produce a concrete change, an owner and a date for checking it. Next time, verify that the change was made and whether the topic keeps appearing in new reviews. If no reviews came in, you do not yet know the result.

In Reputive, each location has its own profile, QR code and plaque, and from the Pro plan you can see a side-by-side comparison of locations. A location with its own e-mail gets a weekly report for itself at the address you set, and the business owner gets a summary for the whole company. AI drafts a reply in the tone set for that location, and you publish it only after approving it. The Pro plan includes three locations; for a larger network, Business is tailored to you. You can try Reputive free for 14 days, no card required.