How to Add Multiple Locations to One GBP Account

How to Manage Multiple Business Locations in Google Business Profile

A single GBP profile is straightforward to run. Twenty profiles, or two hundred, are not — Google's Location Group structure and bulk operations exist precisely because manual, one-profile-at-a-time management breaks down past a handful of locations. This guide covers the full setup for multi-location GBP management, from the first Location Group to the operational rules that keep 100+ profiles consistent.

Most multi-location businesses discover the need for this structure the hard way: a new branch manager edits the wrong field, a franchisee changes the business name, or nobody notices a profile went unverified for six months. The fixes below prevent all three.

Understanding location groups (business accounts)

A Location Group — also called a Business Account in some parts of the interface — is the organisational container for multiple GBP profiles. It works like a folder that holds every location profile under one roof.

Location Groups matter for four reasons. All profiles in a group can be managed from a single dashboard. Access permissions are set at the group level, so an agency manager granted access to the group can manage every profile inside it without separate invitations. The GBP API requires a Location Group for anything past about 10 locations. And bulk verification — verifying many locations in one pass rather than individually — is only available through a Location Group.

A business running five clinics across Delhi and Bengaluru without a Location Group is, in effect, running five separate small businesses with no shared control layer. That's the gap this structure closes.

Setting up a location group

For businesses without an existing group: go to business.google.com and check the profile switcher for a "Business account" option — many businesses already have one without realising it. To create one, use the multi-location management option and select "Create business account," then name it after your brand.

For agencies managing client profiles, create the Location Group under the client's Google Account, never the agency's own account. This single decision determines who keeps control of the profiles if the agency relationship ends. It's the most common mistake in white-label GBP work, and it's expensive to unwind after the fact — Google doesn't make it simple to transfer group ownership retroactively.

Adding locations to a location group

There are two paths, and which one applies depends almost entirely on scale.

For a handful of locations, add them individually: select the Location Group in Business Profile Manager, click "Add location," enter the business name, address, category, phone and website, then proceed through verification for that one profile.

For 10 or more, bulk upload is faster and less error-prone. Download the Google Business Profile bulk upload template from within Business Profile Manager, fill in one row per location, and upload through the Bulk Actions menu. Every location still needs individual verification after the bulk upload — bulk upload creates the profiles, it doesn't verify them.

Managing permissions across locations

Location Groups support three roles. Owner has full access — adding or removing managers, deleting profiles, billing. Manager can edit all profile data, publish posts, and respond to reviews across every location in the group. Site Manager is restricted to editing profile data for one assigned location only.

For franchises, headquarters or the agency of record should hold Owner or Manager access at the group level, seeing every location. Franchisees should be Site Managers, restricted to their own location. This single restriction is what stops a franchisee from editing the brand's core category or business name — a mistake that's surprisingly common when franchisees have full Owner rights.

For agencies running white-label local SEO, add the agency as Manager at the group level and remove that access cleanly if the relationship ends. Because the group itself lives under the client's account, every profile stays with the client.

Bulk operations after setup

Once locations sit inside a Location Group with API access configured, certain updates can go out network-wide in one action: hours changes across all locations, a brand messaging update to the description field, new attributes rolled out to every profile, a photography campaign pushed to all locations at once, and posts with location-variable insertion (the same post template, auto-personalised per branch).

Some things stay per-location no matter how sophisticated the setup. Review responses need to be personalised to the specific review — there's no bulk reply. Verification runs individually per profile. And suspension appeals are handled one at a time, because each suspension has its own specific cause and evidence trail. Understanding why suspensions happen in the first place reduces how often this comes up.

Common multi-location setup mistakes

Profiles managed individually, outside a Location Group, lose bulk management, API access, and centralised permission control — the business ends up doing 40 separate small jobs instead of one coordinated one.

Agencies that create the Location Group under their own account rather than the client's retain control if the relationship sours. This is avoidable at setup and painful to fix later.

Franchisees given Owner access can delete their location, transfer it, or change core details without oversight. Site Manager access closes this gap.

And profiles inside a Location Group still need individual verification — an unverified profile has limited functionality and reduced eligibility to rank, even while it sits correctly inside the group structure.

Scaling past 100 locations

At 100-plus locations, Location Groups combined with the GBP API stop being a nice-to-have and become the only workable model. Manual per-profile work simply doesn't scale to that volume — even a two-minute update per location adds up to over three hours for a single change across 100 profiles. The full guide to managing 100+ GBP listings covers the API setup, data governance, and team structure this requires.

Frequently asked questions

Can I merge two existing Location Groups into one? Not directly through the standard interface. Google's support process can sometimes assist with a merge request, but the more reliable path is to add all profiles from the smaller group into the primary group and then retire the smaller one, rather than waiting on a formal merge.

What happens to Location Group access if the Owner leaves the company? Access follows the Google Account, not the person's role. Before anyone with Owner access leaves, transfer or add ownership to a role-based account (an IT or operations email) rather than an individual's personal Google account, so access doesn't leave with them.

Do franchise locations need separate websites, or can they share one? Either works for GBP purposes — the website field just needs to point somewhere relevant to that specific location, whether that's a shared domain with a location-specific page or a fully separate site. What matters more for local SEO is that each location's NAP data stays consistent between the GBP and whatever website it links to.

Is there a limit to how many locations one Location Group can hold? Google doesn't publish a hard cap, and groups with several hundred locations run without issue. The practical limit is usually organisational — how well your team can maintain data quality at scale, not a platform restriction.

Angryturtle manages multi-location GBP accounts for Indian brands, running the Location Group structure, bulk API operations, and per-location governance so branches don't drift out of sync with brand standards.