Same brand, same dentistry, same website, and one office dominates the map pack while the other is invisible. Here is what is actually different, and what you can change this quarter.
Tekkii's multi-location SEO service exists to close the visibility gap between your best-performing office and every other one, and David Jackson has scored enough multi-location dental groups to put a number on that gap: the weakest location trails its strongest sibling by an average of 14 points on a 0-100 scale. You've filled out every profile, read the guides, watched the videos. Nothing changed. So you wait, assuming the winning location will eventually pull the others up, because they're all the same brand, all pointing to the same website. That logic feels solid.
It's wrong, and acting on it is costing you.
I'm David Jackson, and I run multi-location SEO for independent practice owners competing against the big guys without outspending them. What I see consistently is that owners are reading this signal backwards. The winning location isn't carrying anyone, and it's not a tide that raises the other ships. It's doing well in its own race, while your other locations are running entirely different races with none of the same gear. Waiting on the flagship to fix that puts unnecessary pressure on one office while the others fall further behind.
Google isn't going to correct this on its own. You have to.
Picture a marathon where each runner is racing a completely different course, against different competitors, in a different city. Your winning location didn't pull the others up with it, because they were never on the same team to begin with. That's the clearest way to describe what Google's algorithm is doing.
Each location competes in its own map pack against whoever is physically nearest to it. Your Lenexa office isn't competing against your Overland Park office. It's competing against every other practice within 8-10 miles of its front door, with its own neighborhood competitors, its own local demand level, and its own demographic mix. Google evaluates each pin on its own merits, independent of what the rest of your group is doing.
Here's where a lot of owners get tripped up. The website was probably built around the flagship. Citations pointed there. Reviews piled up there. The content, the service pages, the location-specific language, all of it shaped around that main office. So that location got everything it needed to compete: the right gear, the right preparation for its specific race. The other locations are running in a different neighborhood, against different competitors, with almost none of that same infrastructure behind them.
Across the multi-location dental groups we've scored, the weakest office trails its strongest sibling by an average of 14 points on a 0-100 visibility scale. Same brand, same dentistry, same website. The gap exists because each office competes locally on its own terms, and the other locations simply haven't been equipped yet.
What separates the location that owns its map pack from the one sitting invisible two miles away? Five factors. David pulls these directly from Pin Parity Score scan data, and they show up repeatedly across groups of every size.
Proximity is the biggest ranking factor in Google Business Profile, and it's the one variable you can't touch. Google weighs how close a searcher is to your physical address, and if demand is concentrated near your location, a reasonably complete profile will generate some calls on its own. The flip side: proximity alone can't carry an incomplete or generic profile. It buys you a starting line, not a finish.
This is a small dropdown menu with an outsized effect on whether your location appears in category-specific searches. Many owners pick a primary category at setup and never open the menu again. That's a problem, because you can add up to 10 categories per GBP, and the right mix depends on what your local competitors in that specific area are currently using, not what made sense when you first registered the profile.
David's recommended tool here is GMB Everywhere, a free Chrome extension. It lets you pull up any competitor's GBP and see exactly which categories they've selected, so you're not guessing at what Google expects to see in your neighborhood.
"Filled out" and "optimized" aren't the same thing. Across dozens of profiles, we routinely see groups copy the same photos, the same business description, and the same service descriptions across every location, and that's a missed opportunity at every pin. A Lenexa location shouldn't carry Kansas City-flavored titles and descriptions in its profile fields. The content needs to reflect the specific area that location serves, the way one runner's shoe size is useless to another.
Many practices skip the services section entirely, or fill it in with vague labels and no supporting language. Setting up your services with real keyword phrases tells Google directly what your location does, rather than making the algorithm piece it together from other signals. This is one of the higher-leverage actions you can take in an afternoon, and most competitors haven't bothered.
Your GBP tells Google what your location does, and your website is where Google looks for proof. For every service you list on a GBP, there should be a dedicated, fully written page on your website covering that service. A general services page with a bulleted list doesn't cut it. Google scans the profile, then scans the site looking for confirmation, and if that confirmation isn't there, the profile's claim carries less weight in rankings.
These five factors don't operate in isolation. They compound. A location with strong proximity, correct categories, location-specific content, keyword-rich services, and matching website pages is running a well-equipped race. A location with even two or three of these gaps is running in the wrong shoes against competitors who aren't.
If you're looking at your profiles right now and already seeing gaps, the free Pin Parity Score at tekkii.com/score will show you exactly which locations are underequipped and by how much. If you're not ready to act yet, the scan will still be there when you are.
Reviews don't directly rank a Google Business Profile, but their indirect effect is real and compounds over time. A listing with 1,000 reviews versus one with 10: everyone knows who gets the call. More clicks, more calls, more direction requests, and those behavioral signals feed back into how Google weighs a profile's relevance in its area.
David is clear on one point: this isn't a one-time effort. Generating reviews on an ongoing basis, weekly or even daily, is one of the most available high-leverage actions you can take for each location's visibility. Velocity matters more than total count. A profile adding 15-20 reviews a month with solid fundamentals will outpace a stagnant profile with a larger historical total.
There's also a second reason reviews matter now that didn't exist a few years ago. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews are actively recommending local practices in response to patient questions, and reviews are a direct input into those recommendations. A location with thin or stagnant reviews isn't just losing clicks on Google Maps; it's being passed over when AI engines decide which practice to name.
Each location needs its own review velocity. A strong profile at the flagship doesn't lend its reputation to a newer office with 12 reviews.
All five factors, proximity, categories, profile completeness, keyword-rich services, and website signals, combine into a single measurement David calls the Pin Parity Score. It runs from 0 to 100 and shows you, per location, where each pin stands for Google and local AI search recommendations.
A Google Business Profile ranks roughly 8 to 10 miles at maximum performance. Your winning location has built an edge inside that radius. The others haven't closed the gap yet.
That distinction matters. If your flagship is ranking and your second office isn't, you haven't been penalized or done anything wrong. You have proof that your brand can rank, which means the question isn't whether it's possible. The question is what gear each other location is missing.
Across the multi-location dental groups we've scored, the weakest office trails its strongest sibling by an average of 14 points. Nearly half the groups show a gap of 15 points or more, and some reach 25+. That's the sibling gap hiding inside your brand-level report, invisible unless you score each location on its own.
The Pin Parity Score makes the gap visible. Run yours free at tekkii.com/score and see exactly where each location stands against its own local competitors.
Putting more pressure on your strongest location won't lift the others. Each pin competes in its own race, against its own neighborhood, with its own gear needs, and the only way to close the gap is to outfit each one separately.
Without that, you end up on a seesaw: one location high, another low, no clear reason why. Multi-location SEO is a fundamentally different problem than running one great office, and a strategy built for one location won't stretch across five. Each location has to be worked as its own business, with its own categories, its own content, its own review velocity, and its own website signals.
Leave the gap alone and it compounds. The weak location keeps losing its local race while your flagship carries the weight.
Two paths forward. The first is manual: open each GBP side by side, check that the primary and secondary categories match what local competitors in that specific area are using, count whether every listed service has a dedicated page on your website backing it up, and flag any profiles sharing identical photos or descriptions. It takes time, but it will surface the gaps.
The faster route is to run a free Pin Parity Score at tekkii.com/score. The scan scores each location on a 0-100 scale against the multi-location ranking factors covered above, and it puts your best and worst locations next to each other so the gap is immediately visible. You can also run it against a competitor to see exactly where they've pulled ahead. Across the multi-location dental groups we've scored, the weakest office trails its strongest sibling by an average of 14 points, and nearly half have a gap of 15 points or more.
Run the scan, see where each location stands, and you'll know exactly which office to outfit first. If you've already got your scores and want someone to look at them with you, tekkii.com is the right place to start that conversation.
Google treats each location as a separate business entity, not as a branch of one brand Your main location likely received the bulk of your citations, reviews, website content, and category setup, the other locations didn't get the same groundwork Each location is competing in its own local map against its own neighborhood competitors, with different proximity, demand, and competitor budgets in play
Sharing a website is not enough to transfer Google performance from one location to another Each Google Business Profile needs its own complete setup: correct categories, location-specific service descriptions, unique photos, and its own reviews Each GBP service should also be backed by a dedicated page on the website, not just a bullet point on a general services page
Google allows up to 10 categories per GBP You should add as many as make sense for your business A free Chrome extension called GMB Everywhere lets you see what primary and secondary categories competitors in your area are using, which helps you close gaps in your own setup
Reviews don't directly determine GBP rankings, but they do so indirectly A listing with more reviews drives more clicks, calls, and direction requests, and those user actions do influence rankings Reviews also affect whether AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude recommend a practice in their results Generating reviews consistently on a daily or weekly basis is one of the most impactful and accessible things a practice can do
The Pin Parity Score is a 0-to-100 score that shows where each location stands for Google and local AI search recommendations It combines the key local ranking factors: proximity, GBP categories, profile completeness, services and keywords, and website signals The free tool at tekkii.com/score lets you scan your locations and compare your best location against your weakest, or against a competitor
Tekkii is a multi-location healthcare marketing agency based in Lenexa, Kansas, with 11 years focused on one problem: making every location of a group practice visible to the patients searching for it, in Google and in AI search. The Pin-Level Method and the Pin Parity Score came out of watching too many group owners receive brand-level reports that hid their weakest office. Every piece here is grounded in what the per-location work actually produces.
Every guide on this site starts from the same place: knowing exactly where each location stands. The Pin Parity Score gives you that picture, every office scored 0 to 100 against its own local market, results on screen in about 3 minutes.
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