Following the March 2026 core update, businesses with strong Google Business Profiles saw gains and businesses with neglected ones saw disproportionate drops, more disproportionate than the update’s broader changes to organic search would suggest. See the state of local SEO for B2B and MSP businesses heading into 2026 for the fuller data picture this update fits into.
What changed
- Completeness became a stronger lever: profiles missing hours, services, photos, or attributes saw ranking drops out of proportion to how minor those gaps looked on the surface.
- Review recency and response rate overtook volume: businesses with stale but high review counts lost ground to businesses with fewer, more recent, actively-responded-to reviews. See why review recency now beats review volume for the detail behind this shift.
- Real-time accuracy got flagged as a stronger signal: particularly whether listed hours accurately reflect whether a business is actually open right now.
Why this update hit multi-location businesses hardest
A single-location business with a healthy profile had little to worry about. A multi-location business with one strong flagship listing and a handful of neglected satellite profiles felt this update unevenly, gaining in some markets and losing visibility in others, purely based on which locations had been maintained.
What to do about it now
Treat this as confirmation that Google Business Profile management is infrastructure, not a setup task. Run a completeness audit across every location, prioritize fixing the gaps that are easiest to close (hours accuracy, service descriptions, current photos), and put a recurring review-response process in place if one doesn’t already exist.
The businesses that adapt fastest to this kind of update are the ones already treating local SEO as an ongoing operational responsibility rather than a project that was finished once, years ago.
Related reading: see the full Local SEO hub for B2B & MSP businesses for the framework behind adapting to updates like this one.
Frequently asked questions
What changed for Google Business Profile after the March 2026 core update?
Profile completeness became a stronger ranking lever, and review recency plus response rate overtook raw review count in importance.
Why did multi-location businesses feel this update more than single-location ones?
Businesses with one well-maintained flagship listing and neglected satellite profiles saw uneven results, gaining in some markets and losing visibility in others based purely on maintenance.