Not all of the rules and guidelines for adding information to Google Maps are crystal clear [some will claim this to be a major understatement, but let’s not go into that discussion here and now], but when it comes to chains, some of the instructions are very unambiguous - which is great. With regards to the name it is stated that “All business locations within the same country must have the same name for all locations” and for the category we find “All locations of a business must share the one category that best represents the business”.
In spite of these clear and explicit instructions, loads of shops that belong to a chain are not following the name and/or category guidelines. A number of chains have a such high levels of consistency for names and categories that it is safe to assume that those are being centrally managed by someone in the HQ marketing team, but others are borderline dramatic when it comes to consistency. In those cases it is equally clear that nobody is taking care of managing their Google Maps presence. Is it ignorance or are these people simply not aware how frequently Google Maps is used for navigation by their customers?
Anyway, it creates a great opportunity for some high-volume local guides contributions (remember: 5 points per accepted edit). Just open Google Maps and type in the name of some common chains in your country: supermarkets, shoe stores, clothing shops, drugstores, car dealers - I have come across inconsistencies with all of those. A good example is a chain of mattress shops in Belgium, where about 80% had the correct category mattress shop, but 20% were labeled bedding shop. In another case, a chain of children’s clothes stores went through a rebranding operation that included a new name for the chain. Some shops already had the new name in Maps, others still had the old name (although the Street View images clearly showed that the rebranding had also taken place for them).
If you find such inconsistencies with chains, make sure to check the other data points as well (opening hours, telephone, website, etc). As mentioned before: if name and category are not correct (or at least not consistent with other outlets from the same chain), there is a fair chance that the information is not monitored at all by either the chain HQ or the local store. So, in quite a few of these cases there are other things to be corrected.
A final tip: also look up chains that are out of business, even those that are no longer existing already for several years (just google ‘bankrupt’ and ‘chain’ in your local language for inspiration). In a lot of cases you will still find some old entries of shops that used to belong to those chains but were never removed - in some cases with a new business already registered on the same location. Those you can mark as permanently closed.
Other posts in this series:
Best Practice: Find new places to add to the map
Best Practice: Learn to be patient
Best Practice: Find the right category
Best Practice: Reporting duplicates
Best Practice: Industrial Zones
Disclaimer: the practices described here as best practice are my personal interpretation, based on my hands-on experience as local guide, and I don’t claim any level of official endorsement.