Google Business Profiles for a heating company with several branches

Step 1: decide which branches qualify

A branch qualifies for its own profile if it is a real location, staffed during its stated hours, from which your business serves customers. Google's guidelines for representing your business exclude virtual offices and mailboxes where you don't actually operate, and accept a shared or co-working office only with signage and your staff present during business hours.

Run each location through four questions:

1. Do we hold a lease or own the premises?
2. Do our staff work there during the hours we will publish?
3. Do crews dispatch from there, or do customers visit?
4. Would a Google reviewer visiting the address find our signage?

If any answer is no, it is not yet a branch for profile purposes. A storage unit where two vans park overnight doesn't qualify. A dispatcher working from home doesn't qualify. Wait until the branch is real, then create the profile.

Departments are not branches

A sales showroom and a service department at the same address are one location in most heating companies. Google allows separate profiles for public-facing departments only when they operate as distinct entities, typically with separate entrances and categories. Most heating companies should keep one profile per address.

Step 2: settle the name once

Your profile name should match the name on your signs, trucks and invoices. Google's guidance says not to add extra details such as taglines, service descriptions, location details or hours to the name.

For a chain of branches, Google's guidelines say that locations in the same country should use the same name, with limited exceptions for sub-brands used consistently. In practice:

• Right: "[Brand] Heating" at every branch, with the city appearing in the address or service area.
• Wrong: "[Brand] Heating – Best Furnace Repair [City]".
• Acceptable if real: "[Brand] Heating [City]" only if that is how every branch's signs and paperwork actually read.

Write the naming rule into your branch marketing standard so a new manager can't improvise.

Step 3: categories, the same across branches

Choose categories by what the branch actually does, and keep them the same at every branch that offers the same services. Google's guidelines say locations offering the same service should share the same category.

A common pattern for heating companies is one primary category describing the core heating trade and a few secondary categories for real, significant lines of work. If one branch does commercial boiler work and the others don't, that branch alone carries the extra category. Don't add categories as keywords for work you rarely do.

Step 4: address or service area

Most heating branches send technicians to customers' homes. Under Google's rules, a business that does not serve customers at its address should hide that address and set a service area instead. A branch with a showroom that customers visit can show its address and also set a service area.

Google's service-area help page explains how to set areas by city, postal code or region, and the representation guidelines say service areas generally shouldn't extend beyond about two hours' drive from the business.

For multi-branch companies, the harder question is the boundary between branches. Two branches whose service areas overlap heavily will compete with each other in the same searches. Draw the boundaries from real drive times, write them down, and give every town to exactly one branch where possible.

Step 5: verification

Each new profile must be verified. Google offers bulk verification for businesses with 10 or more locations, but its help page says service-area businesses are not eligible and that agencies with more than one business in one account can't bulk verify. Most heating companies will therefore verify branch by branch.

Plan verification into a new branch's launch. It can take time, and the branch can't appear in map results until it is done. Our new branch service sets the order: real location, number, page, then profile.

Step 6: ownership and access

Profile ownership is where multi-branch companies get hurt most. Profiles end up owned by former managers, by agencies or by personal accounts, and recovering them is slow.

Set this up once:

• A company Google account, not a personal one, as primary owner of every profile
• At least two senior people as owners
• Branch managers as managers on their own branch only
• Any agency as manager, never owner
• A written register listing every profile, its owners and its managers, reviewed twice a year

Step 7: link each profile to its own page

Each profile's website link should go to that branch's page, not the home page. The page should show the same name, number and service area as the profile, describe the branch's team and the work it does, and give a clear way to call, text or email that branch. See our location pages service for what a strong branch page includes.

Use a tracked local number on each profile, recorded in your number register, so calls from each profile are counted against the right branch. Our call routing service explains the number plan.

Duplicates: find them and fix them

Duplicates split your reviews and confuse Google about which listing is real. Search Google Maps for your brand name, your phone numbers and each branch address. Also search old business names if you have rebranded or acquired a company.

For each duplicate, decide whether it is the same location (merge or remove the extra) or a closed location (mark as permanently closed). Keep a record of what you changed and when.

A monthly branch profile check

Fifteen minutes per branch each month prevents most problems:

1. Hours correct, including upcoming holidays
2. Phone number matches the register
3. No new edits suggested by the public that changed details
4. New reviews answered by someone at that branch
5. At least a few new photos from real local jobs each quarter
6. Calls and direction requests noted in the branch report

Common mistakes, in one list

• Creating profiles for towns with no branch
• Adding service words or city names to the business name
• Different categories at branches that do the same work
• Overlapping service areas that make branches compete
• Profiles owned by people rather than the company
• Every profile linking to the home page
• Leaving a closed branch's profile active

HeatingConsultants.ca is a marketing and business consulting service, not a heating contractor. If you'd like your branch profiles audited, the contact page explains how to reach Ali.