Managing Multiple Locations

Everything covered so far -- categories, photos, reviews, performance tracking -- applies to every location you run. Adding more locations does not change the strategy. It just adds more profiles to manage.

Here is how to do that without losing track of anything.

Adding a New Location

All your business profiles live under one Google account. To add a location, click the three-dot menu from your GMB dashboard and go to "Your Business Profiles." You will see all existing locations listed. Click the button to add a new one.

The setup process is identical to creating your first profile -- business name, address, phone number, verification code. The one thing to watch: when you type your business name, Google may suggest your existing location as an option. Do not select that one. You want to create a new entry for the new address. Choose the "Create a business with this name" option instead.

Verification works the same way: phone code or business video. Once verified, the new location appears alongside your other profiles.

Phone Number: Shared or Separate?

This depends entirely on how your business handles calls.

If you are a restaurant or service business where each location takes its own reservations or bookings, separate phone numbers make sense. Customers calling the downtown location should reach someone who knows that location's availability and hours.

If all calls route to you as the owner regardless of location -- a single person managing multiple small locations -- one consolidated number is simpler. Customers get through, you get the call, nothing is missed.

There is no universal right answer. Match the phone setup to how your operation actually works.

Switching Between Locations

Once you have multiple profiles, you can switch between them from the dashboard. Click the three-dot menu, go to "Your Business Profiles," and select the location you want to manage. Each location has its own dashboard, its own analytics, its own review thread.

For a quick overview of all locations at once, there is a separate Business Manager view accessible from the same screen. It shows all your profiles in a list rather than requiring you to navigate into each one individually.

Organizing With Groups

Once you have several locations, groups are worth setting up. You can create a group called "Downtown" or "North Side" or "Franchise Batch 1" -- whatever makes sense for your structure -- and then transfer specific profiles into it.

From the Business Manager view, select a profile, click Actions, and choose Transfer to move it into a group. Once grouped, you can filter the Business Manager view by group to see only those locations. This is most useful once you are managing more than five or six profiles and need a way to work through them systematically without scrolling past irrelevant ones.

The Essentials

1. Adding a new location is the same process as the first. Nothing new to learn -- just run through the same setup. The only gotcha is making sure you create a new entry rather than selecting your existing profile when the name suggestion appears.
2. Each location needs its own optimization. A second profile is not automatically well-optimized because the first one is. Photos, reviews, posts, and the performance data are all location-specific.
3. Groups pay off at scale. For two or three locations, the standard dashboard is fine. Once you are managing many, creating groups by geography or category is the difference between an organized operation and a chaotic one.

Further Reading

• Add and manage multiple Google Business Profile locations: official guide for adding locations, switching between them, and using the Business Manager view
• Manage business groups in your profile: how to create, transfer, and filter by groups in the multi-location dashboard