LSAs for Ownership Group That Has Franchise Locations in Multiple Services Areas in the Same State

[andrea_ppc]

I have a client in the home/water restoration industry and they have 11 franchise locations. I am running into issues on how I can get all 11 of their locations verified.

I contacted the LSA onboarding team per the recommendation of a LSA Google rep. I was able to get one of the franchise location accounts fully verified without their support after adding the DBA and resubmitting their IICRC license a few times.

However, I am now running into issues with additional locations. The franchise ownership group has offices in 11 different areas throughout Northeast and Northwest Ohio, with 1 location fully verified. I contacted support again yesterday to see how I can go about getting the other 10 locations verified and was told to just expand the service areas within the verified location and change the business name to be more general. The issue with that is that they all have different addresses, phone numbers GBP pages, and names through a DBA.

I was actually told by the support rep yesterday that "it doesn't matter if the phone number doesn't match the business offices" - which it clearly does from a customer service and user experience perspective because that location can't service them!

I was also told that even though each location has a DBA, unique page on a corporate website, and different contact info/addresses; the fact that they have the same owner, business license, and insurance that Google will flag the accounts if I set up separate LSA accounts since just expanding the service areas isn't an option. Some of their locations can be closer in proximity to one another but some are hours apart and all operate independently of one another.

I was actually told by a Google rep that "It doesn't matter if the phone number on the profile doesn't match the phone number for the other businesses" and that I should just change the name on the LSA account to be more general and just expand the service areas even though the contact information is different for each - like what?! How is that good customer service?

Does anyone have any similar experiences with going about getting the other locations verified with different LSA accounts without getting flagged? There has to be other instances of multi-location businesses/franchises running LSA ads.

Thank you so much for your assistance!

 

[Chris Barnard]

I have a client in the home/water restoration industry and they have 11 franchise locations. I am running into issues on how I can get all 11 of their locations verified.

I contacted the LSA onboarding team per the recommendation of a LSA Google rep. I was able to get one of the franchise location accounts fully verified without their support after adding the DBA and resubmitting their IICRC license a few times.

However, I am now running into issues with additional locations. The franchise ownership group has offices in 11 different areas throughout Northeast and Northwest Ohio, with 1 location fully verified. I contacted support again yesterday to see how I can go about getting the other 10 locations verified and was told to just expand the service areas within the verified location and change the business name to be more general. The issue with that is that they all have different addresses, phone numbers GBP pages, and names through a DBA.

I was actually told by the support rep yesterday that "it doesn't matter if the phone number doesn't match the business offices" - which it clearly does from a customer service and user experience perspective because that location can't service them!

I was also told that even though each location has a DBA, unique page on a corporate website, and different contact info/addresses; the fact that they have the same owner, business license, and insurance that Google will flag the accounts if I set up separate LSA accounts since just expanding the service areas isn't an option. Some of their locations can be closer in proximity to one another but some are hours apart and all operate independently of one another.

I was actually told by a Google rep that "It doesn't matter if the phone number on the profile doesn't match the phone number for the other businesses" and that I should just change the name on the LSA account to be more general and just expand the service areas even though the contact information is different for each - like what?! How is that good customer service?

Does anyone have any similar experiences with going about getting the other locations verified with different LSA accounts without getting flagged? There has to be other instances of multi-location businesses/franchises running LSA ads.

Thank you so much for your assistance!

Hey Andrea,

So each of the remaining 10 LSA accounts have a GBP? And does that GBP name and address exactly match the respective LSA account you're attempting to verify? The business names and addresses need to exactly match.

You could also apply to the Enterprise Equivalency program, but that might be getting ahead of things. https://support.google.com/localservices/answer/14656501?hl=en

Regardless of the multi account/single account strategy, you should still be able to target additional locations with the one verified LSA account as long as they're in the same state (or licensing region).