Your portal reviews do not count on Google
This is the finding that surprises agencies most. Reviews on Rightmove, Zoopla or a lettings platform have no effect whatsoever on your Google ranking. Google counts reviews left on your Google Business Profile, and nothing else.
The result is a branch with four hundred portal reviews and eleven on Google, sitting below a smaller competitor in the map pack a vendor sees when deciding who to invite for a valuation. The fix is a routine at completion — the moment a client is most pleased — asking for a Google review specifically.
Every branch needs its own profile
Google ranks each office as its own business. That is the opportunity for a multi-branch agency and the trap for one that runs everything from a single head-office listing: only the address on that listing ranks locally, and every other town is left to competitors.
In practice we usually find the original office has a complete profile and the newer branches have barely-touched ones — wrong category, no photos, hours from three years ago. Aggregate reporting hides it, because the flagship carries the numbers.
The valuation searches nobody optimises for
“Free house valuation [town]”, “how much is my house worth” and “estate agents in [town]” are the searches that start an instruction, and they are local searches decided in the map pack and on the page a vendor lands on.
Most agency websites have one valuation page for the whole business. A branch page that names the local team, the areas and postcodes it covers and the property types on its patch is what actually ranks for that town — and it is what a local vendor recognises as genuinely local rather than corporate.
Lettings is a separate search, and a separate page
Landlords search on a different cycle from vendors and compare on fees and management rather than valuation. “Letting agents [town]” and “property management [town]” rank separately from sales terms.
Agencies that bury lettings behind a single national page lose those searches to specialists. A lettings page per branch, with the fee structure explained plainly, is usually an easier win than the sales terms because fewer competitors bother.