How to Track Google Rankings for Multiple Locations

If your business has more than one location, a single Google ranking for each keyword doesn't tell you much. Google shows people results based on where they are, so the same search can put you first near one office and on page 2 near another. To see what's really happening, check every keyword from every location, week by week.

Why one ranking number misleads

Say you have offices in Des Moines and Ankeny, and you rank #3 for “furnace repair”. Ranked from where? Someone searching next to the Des Moines office might see you first, while someone 15 minutes away in Ankeny sees three competitors and a map pack you're not in. Averaged together, it looks fine. It isn't fine for Ankeny.

The same goes for AI answers: when someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for “a furnace repair company near me”, the answer depends on where they are and what's written about your business there.

How to track rankings for several locations

1. List each location with its address, the towns it serves and its Google Business Profile.
2. Pick the searches that matter, for example the service on its own (“furnace repair”), the service with each town (“furnace repair ankeny”) and “near me” versions.
3. Decide each keyword's scope. Most service searches are local to every location. Some only make sense for one (a town only one office covers). Some aren't local at all, like “how often should a furnace be serviced”.
4. Check each keyword from each location, not from your own desk. Google uses the searcher's location, so a search from your office only tells you what people near your office see. Use a rank tracker that lets you set the location, or Google Ads' free Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool to see results for a chosen place.
5. Track the map separately. Google Maps and the map pack change street by street, so check them from a grid of points around each location, not a single spot.
6. Check weekly and compare locations side by side. A keyword dropping off page 1 at one location is the thing to catch early.

What to do when one location lags

When a keyword ranks well from one location and poorly from another, the gap is almost always local to the weaker one:

• Its page on your website. Each location needs its own page with its address, phone, hours, the towns it serves and proof of real work there (jobs, photos, reviews from local customers), linked from your main service pages.
• Its Google Business Profile. Complete categories, services, hours, photos and a link to that location's page, not your homepage.
• Its reviews. Ask customers of that location to review that location's profile.
• Its local mentions. Directories, local news, chambers of commerce and suppliers in that town.

How Groow does it

Groow checks every keyword you track on Google each week from each of your locations, or from the one location you set, and shows them side by side: where each keyword ranks, how it moved, the page that ranks and what else Google shows. Local maps can be centred on any location, and each location's reviews, listing and Google posts are handled on their own. If your locations are under one Google account, Groow brings them all in once your main profile is linked.