SAB not showing for branded terms reliably - brand name issue?

[Gesundheit]

Hey y'all! I've been reading for a while but first post. Hope you'll keep me around after this - it's a doozy, but I'll try to be succinct as I can.

We operate multiple SABs in the window installation market in several markets in the US. We've had persistent problems with our GBPs not showing up every time for branded searches (tested locally, incognito, etc.), but the Insights reports do show that they are being seen from time to time. Besides visibility, our field teams are concerned about the ability to locate our profiles for reviews.

There are a few unusual circumstances that I think may be affecting us - anybody have any thoughts on whether these are problematic?

• Our brand is a subdivision of a larger parent brand: the parent brand produces and distributes Widgets to local partners, and our model is D2C. However, our brand name is basically the same as a product type that the parent brand sells.
  
  To try and illustrate this, if the parent brand is "Example Brand" and they sell New Widgets and Used Widgets, our brand name is "Example Brand Used Widgets". (That's long in the tooth but I assure you this is an accurate representation, and it makes more sense in reality.)
  
  To make it more confusing, parent brand's business model is to work with local vendors who also sell Example Brand Used Widgets.
  
  The GBP insights report shows me that most of the queries we get impressions for include our brand name, but they're logged as Branded rather than Direct.
  
  Could this mean that our GBP isn't showing up reliably for branded queries because Google thinks the search is for a product rather than a brand?
  
  
• Our competitors sometimes have show rooms with physical addresses, and other times also operate as SABs (depending on the business). An analysis of GBPs shows me that almost all of our competitors are including addresses in the profiles, regardless of whether they have a showroom or not. We never have show rooms and do all of our business at the customer's homes, and I have our GBPs set up without an address.
  
  Would it be wise to test including an address on our profiles in an effort to try and gain visibility? I know this goes against Google guidelines and I'm typically stringent on that, but combined with the above issue, I wonder if it may be necessary to rank.

Also worth noting: we're still a start up (roughly a year old) and have yet to invest in any major SEO, link building or brand building. I'm confident that's an issue here too, and I can't help but wonder if part of the issue is also just brand disambiguation (between us and the parent brand, who are very well established.)

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Sounds like the issue is due to the name being the same as the products being sold. If I understood that part correctly. I don't think it has anything to do with the address being hidden.

However, our brand name is basically the same as a product type that the parent brand sells.

 

[Gesundheit]

Sounds like the issue is due to the name being the same as the products being sold. If I understood that part correctly. I don't think it has anything to do with the address being hidden.

I suspect that's the case as well. Do you think that this could be resolved over time by brand building, link building, etc.?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I would say so, yes.