Franchises: The Visibility Ratios to Track Location by Location
Updated on 11 September 2026
Revenue alone says nothing about the health of a franchised location's online visibility — two restaurants with comparable revenue can have opposite visibility trajectories, one growing, the other in slow decline. The ratios below let you track this dimension separately.
Why track ratios instead of raw numbers
A location with 40 new reviews this month isn't necessarily in better shape than one that had only 15, if the first gets ten times the customer volume. Ratios normalize the comparison and make trends readable independent of a location's size.
Ratios to track
| Ratio | Calculation | What it indicates |
|---|---|---|
| Review conversion rate | Reviews received / estimated customer count | Effectiveness of review solicitation |
| Response rate | Reviews responded to / reviews received | Discipline of local management |
| Average response time | Sum of response times / number of responses | Responsiveness, an active-management signal for Google |
| Share of negative reviews handled within 48h | 1-3★ reviews answered within 48h / total 1-3★ reviews | Crisis management |
| Review freshness | Reviews from the last 30 days / total reviews | Momentum signal for Google and customers |
| Rating vs. network median ratio | Location's rating / network median rating | Relative position within the network |
| Listing completeness rate | GBP fields filled / fields available | Local SEO foundation |
| Google Posts posting frequency | Posts published / month | Additional freshness signal |
Why the Local Pack makes these ratios critical
For a typical local search, about 42% of clicks go to the Local Pack (the block of 3 listings with a map), and up to 75% of clicks concentrate on the top 3 for a "restaurant near me"-type query. A location that slips in that ranking, even slightly, loses a disproportionate share of its potential visibility — which justifies close tracking rather than a one-off check.
How to use these ratios in practice
Compare over time, not just across locations. The most useful signal is the change in a ratio for the same location over several weeks, rather than a raw ranking across locations — see benchmarking local performance across your locations for the detail on this distinction.
Alert thresholds instead of constant manual tracking. Setting a threshold (for example: response rate below 70%, or response time above 72h) that triggers an automatic alert avoids having to manually check every location every week.
For the general organization of network-wide tracking, see benchmarking local performance across your locations.
SEOresto calculates these ratios automatically for every location in your network. Custom Réseau pricing from €199/month. See pricing.
Sources: cityness.fr, "How to Appear on Google Maps in 2026" (42% of clicks to the Local Pack); tapwin.fr, local restaurant SEO (75% of clicks to the top 3).
Author: Dmitrii Portnov, founder of SEOresto.
