Business Branches Naming.

[Briggs]

I was wondering about how to name each of the different branches of a franchise-chain business. For the most part, I myself personally tend to name the place as Business Suburb (e.g. McDonald's North Parramatta, or El Jannah Blacktown). But many, many other chains are different otherwise to varying degrees.

Some examples of this include:

• McDonalds as per my standard: e.g. McDonald's North Parramatta, McDonald's Auburn, McDonald's Parramatta F/C W/F L5, McDonald's The Strand Arcade. Most food chains have this.
• Commonwealth Bank adds branch at the end of the listing: Commonwealth Bank Parramatta Branch, Commonwealth Bank Sydney Markets Branch, some don't have the suburb or branch on the end though.
• Fantastic Furniture using a hyphen: Fantastic Furniture - Auburn, Fantastic Furniture - Chullora, Fantastic Furniture - Castle Hill, etc.
• Subway® Restaurant is an example that doesn't actually follow this rule, and is pretty much consistent all throughout, whether it has the ® Restaurant at the end or not. Speaking of this, what should Subway be listed as anyway?

I understand there are guidelines for representing businesses on Google Maps that give out guidelines for name consistency. How would we be able to either do a bulk update, expedite or streamline the process to ensure consistency, and to determine which naming system/structure these places should use. I understand that some of these listings do have owners or managers claiming these locations, but for consistency purposes, how would we be able to go about this? And how exactly should we be listing these anyway?

Hoping for some clear answers, thanks!

[Flash · Accepted solution]

Hello,

All locations of a chain should be named the same.  The rules of the map do not allow descriptors in the name (unless they are integral to the name), including location descriptors or store IDs.  The only exception is for hotels.

So, for example, each branch of McDonald's should simply be named McDonald's.  Their location is already defined by the address and the marker location.

With regards to Subway, the ® symbol is not permitted and "Restaurant" is not integral to the name.  The fact that it is a restaurant is already defined by the category.

The portion of the help centre that contained this information was taken down when Map Maker closed and unfortunately has not been replaced yet.  I will refer you to the Google My Business guidelines because the both the sections on Names and on Chains match the rules for the public when they edit the map, but please be aware that not everything on that page corresponds to the rules we are to use when mapping, thus please do enquire about anything else you might wish to know even if it seems to be covered on that page.

Thank you for your question, it's good to see people wanting to get things correct!

[HTMaps]

Dear @Flash

It was my question too.

I liked your clear answer.

[Briggs]

@Flash,

Perfect response. I've been changing a few Subways from Subway to Subway® Restaurant, adding location descriptors to all these different franchises and chains and giving out the wrong information all this time over LGC, now I have learned the error of my ways! Thanking you.

I'm really hoping now that I can edit all these chains now to comply with these guidelines, although I'm no digital business manager who could do those electronic bulk spreadsheets. I'm expecting a lot of rejections along the way, but wish me luck anyway!

I do have another question though. In Westfield Parramatta there are two McDonald's. The last time I tried to update the information for related entities, two separate stores actually merged into one, and unfortunately I could not recreate or send feedback for this.

What should I do in regards to this situation occurring, or to prevent this from happening?

[JeroenM]

Wow.

Following your links @Briggs I read this post. I see one of the McDonalds is still called McDonald's Parramatta F/C W/F L5. I have never seen anything like it!

F/C for food court and W/F for the name of the shopping center...my first association before I knew the name of the mall was "what the ****" (LOL).

[Briggs]

Revisiting this post almost a year later and now it's pretty much becoming vaguely accepted that the location name is permissible on listings. The Google My Business forums have previously advised that this is okay (e.g. Boots Pharmacy - Oxford Street) Maybe we ought to revisit and have a look at the guidelines once again to consider if they need a revision? I do always appreciate some coherence in realising a united front, but I would still like to strongly increase the integrity of the maps.

[Flash]

Google My Business has famously ignored the guidelines of the map for years.  This is unfortunate, as the Maps guidelines reflect how the database works, and thus some GMB guidelines have een known to cause issues with the data.

In most cases their guidelines do match the overall guidelines, but when the deviate we follow the Maps guidelines instead of the GMB guidelines.

I remove descriptors from names all the time, and Google continues to consider those good edits and approves the vast majority of them.

[jeb1900]

It's very frustrating all these businesses who insist on adding suburb descriptions onto their names.... Bunnings seems to be constantly doing it.  It does give easy points to keep reverting them to what's correct, but so frustrating too.