Running Google Business Profiles for more than one location
How to add a second location to Google Business Profile, verify 10+ locations in bulk, organize profiles in groups and avoid duplicate-profile trouble.
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Short answer
To add a second location to Google Business Profile, create a new profile for it at business.google.com/add from the same Google account, then verify it on its own. Each real, staffed location gets exactly one profile with the same brand name, its own local phone number and a link to its own page on your website. Once you reach 10 or more locations, you can verify them in bulk.
Opening a second location is a milestone, and one of the first practical questions is how to add a second location to Google Business Profile without disturbing the first. It's also where a lot of businesses get their Google presence wrong: they edit the first profile's address, create duplicate profiles, or point every location at the homepage. Each of those costs visibility, and some can get a profile suspended.
We have teams in two cities ourselves, Chicago and Denver, so this is a setup we think about for our own business as well as for clients. Here's how to do it properly.
Before you add a location: is it eligible?
Google's Business Profile guidelines set the bar. A location qualifies if it makes in-person contact with customers during its stated hours. That rules out a few things businesses often try:
- Virtual offices. Google says a rented mailing address you don't operate from "isn't eligible for a Business Profile."
- PO boxes and remote mailboxes. Not acceptable as addresses.
- Co-working spaces, unless your office there has clear signage, receives customers during business hours and is staffed by your team during those hours.
If your second location is a real, staffed place where customers come or from which you serve them, you're fine. If it's an address to "show up" in another town, it isn't a location, and creating a profile for it risks suspension.
How to add a second location to Google Business Profile
The process for one extra location is the same as creating your first profile. Google's instructions start at business.google.com/add.
- Sign in with the Google account that manages your first profile. Keeping all locations under one account, or one business group, makes management far easier. Ideally use an email on your own domain.
- Check that the location doesn't already have a profile. Search Google Maps for your business name and the new address. If a profile exists, claim it instead of creating a new one.
- Add the business. Go to business.google.com/add and follow the steps: name, category, address or service area, phone number and website.
- Use the same business name. Google's guidelines say all locations of a business in the same country must use the same name. Don't add the city or a keyword to the name.
- Verify the new location. Google chooses the verification method, which can be a phone call or text, email, video or postcard. Google says verification reviews take up to 5 business days, and most postcard codes arrive within 14 days.
- Complete the profile. Hours, categories, services, photos of this location, and a description that fits it.
Don't change the address on your existing profile to the new location. That moves the old profile, along with its reviews, rather than adding a second one.
What each location needs
Every location should stand on its own. For each profile, set up:
- A local phone number. Google's guidelines ask for a number that connects to the individual location, and to use a local number instead of a central call center line whenever possible.
- Its own page on your website. Link each profile to a page about that location, not your homepage. The page should have the address, hours, directions, staff, services offered there and photos of the actual place.
- Accurate hours, including holiday hours, for that location.
- Categories and services that match what that location offers. If only one location does repairs, only that profile should list repairs.
- Its own photos. Exterior, interior, team. Customers use them to recognize the place.
- Its own reviews. Ask customers to review the location they visited.
The location pages matter more than most owners expect. They give each profile a relevant page to point to and give search engines a clear signal of what's offered where. Our guide to local landing pages covers how to write them so they're genuinely useful, not near-copies of each other.
Storefront, service-area or hybrid?
Each location needs the right profile type, and they don't all have to match.
- Storefront. Customers come to you. Show the address.
- Service-area business. You go to customers and don't serve them at your address. Google's guidelines say you should hide your address. You can list up to 20 service areas, and the overall area shouldn't extend beyond about two hours' driving time from where the business is based.
- Hybrid. Customers come to you, and you also visit or deliver to them. Show the address and set a service area.
A contractor with two depots usually wants two service-area profiles with service areas that reflect where each crew actually works. Overlapping areas are common; just keep each one realistic.
When you reach 10 or more locations
Adding profiles one at a time gets slow. Google supports bulk location management once you have 10 or more locations: you create a business group, prepare a spreadsheet of locations, upload it, fix any errors and request verification for all of them.
Bulk verification has rules of its own. Google's bulk verification guidance says you need at least 10 locations in the upload, and only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify. Service-area businesses can bulk verify only if their locations are also customer-facing during regular hours; otherwise each location is verified individually. Using an email address on your business's own domain is recommended, because other addresses can slow verification.
Organizing profiles with business groups
Business groups work like a shared folder for profiles. You can create one in Business Profile Manager once you have two or more profiles, then add co-workers or an agency as owners or managers of the whole group instead of each profile separately.
A few practical rules we follow:
- The business owns the group. Agencies and staff are added as managers.
- At least two people at the business have owner access, so nobody gets locked out when someone leaves.
- Group names describe the structure, like "Retail stores" or "Colorado locations," if you need more than one.
Mistakes to avoid
- Duplicate profiles. Google says not to create more than one page for each location, in one account or several. Duplicates split reviews and can trigger suspensions.
- Keywords or city names in the business name. "Smith Plumbing Denver" is not your name if your sign says "Smith Plumbing."
- Every profile linking to the homepage. You lose the chance to show location-specific relevance.
- A central call-center number on every profile. Use local numbers wherever possible.
- Copy-pasted descriptions and posts. Each location should sound like itself.
- Moving a profile instead of adding one. Changing an address relocates the profile and its reviews.
If a profile does get suspended, our guide to getting a suspended Business Profile reinstated walks through the process.
What we'd do
For a business opening its second location, we'd check eligibility first, then create and verify the new profile under the same account, build a proper location page on the website, and set up a local phone number before launch. We'd also start review requests at the new location from its first week.
For a business with ten or more locations, we'd set up a business group, clean up any duplicates, standardize names, and move to bulk management with a single spreadsheet as the source of truth.
If you're adding locations and want it done right the first time, our local SEO team handles multi-location profiles, location pages and reviews together.
