Day one of a review analytics platform is usually the hardest: finding and connecting three hundred stores by hand takes weeks, and a half-finished setup is worse than none. Importing your store list reduces that job to a four-step wizard: choose a source, confirm candidates, set review options, check the cost and start. This post walks through the import flow in BranchVoice step by step, with the points a retail chain should watch for.
Why importing your store list is a wizard, not a button
A chain's store list is clean in the ERP, but its counterpart on map platforms is messy: some branches were created by franchisees under a different name, some have closed but the listing lives on, and some mall stores hide beneath the mall's own listing. A one-shot "upload list" button hides that mess; the wizard makes you decide at each step and connects only the records you approved.
Step 1: choose a source
An import starts from Google Maps or Yandex Maps. For Google there are three routes:
- Search: search terms such as the brand name are combined with a list of provinces and run against Google. Leave provinces empty and the whole of Turkey is scanned. Business categories are pre-filled from your company's sector, so listings that carry the brand name but the wrong category (a paint dealer with the same name, say) are flagged as suspicious. Options cover match strictness (exact, contains, broad), a cap per search, skipping closed businesses and a deep scan inside shopping malls.
- Place ID list: if you already hold Google's place identifiers, paste them or upload a CSV file; the wizard reports bad rows and duplicates.
- Link list: paste Google Maps URLs.
For Yandex you can search (terms × provinces, optionally restricted to the brand's own branches with a chain number) or paste business links. The same wizard adds Şikayetvar (Turkey's main consumer complaint site, by brand name) and Ekşi Sözlük (a large Turkish community forum, by keyword and topic); these sources have no candidate step and are defined directly.
Source and review settings you use often can be saved as a template and reused when a new region opens.
Step 2: review the candidates
The search runs in the background, province by province; when it finishes you get a candidate list. For each candidate:
- Match score: how closely the business name resembles the brand name (robust to Turkish character variants).
- Suspicious flag: a category mismatch, or another line of business appearing after the brand name.
- Existing store match: shown if the store was connected before; Yandex candidates are matched to an existing Google store by location (roughly 120 metres), so the same branch is never created twice.
- Permanently closed status.
You can view candidates on a map, hide suspicious or already-connected ones, and filter by region or text. Bulk editing assigns region, store type (high street, mall, outlet) and ERP code to the selected candidates; those fields later serve as scope in reports and alert rules.
Step 3: review settings
Here you decide which reviews to pull from the stores: the last N or all of them, a maximum count, a date range (6 months, 1 year, 2 years, all), sort order and language. Two settings deserve particular care:
- Store personal data: when switched off, the reviewer's name and profile link are not stored and only a pseudonymous identifier is generated. For companies with strict data-protection requirements this should be the default.
- Sync frequency: weekly, monthly or a one-off pull only. Details are in scheduled review sync.
AI analysis is on by default; switch it off and the source's reviews are collected but not classified.
Step 4: cost estimate and confirmation
Before anything starts, the summary screen shows the number of selected stores, the estimated review count, the estimated duration and the cost. The estimate is built from the number of businesses found, the number of reviews to fetch and, if AI analysis is on, the number of reviews to analyse. If you would exceed your plan's store limit the wizard says so here and disables the start button, so there are no surprises.
On confirmation the selected candidates are saved as stores, each is linked to its map source and the review-fetch jobs are queued. You follow progress on the Review Queue page; analysis begins as reviews arrive and the first results reach the dashboard. How Google reviews are attached to stores is covered in Google Maps review management.
A checklist for chains
| Topic | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Franchise branches | Search with "broad" matching and inspect suspicious candidates one by one |
| Mall stores | Enable the deep mall scan; otherwise some listings stay invisible |
| Closed branches | Keep "skip closed businesses" on |
| Two map platforms | Google first, then Yandex; Yandex candidates are matched to existing stores by location |
| New region opening | Use your saved template and search only the new province |
Next steps
The import is the step that sets the quality of everything after it: a cleanly connected store list means accurate alerts and accurate reports. To import your store list together and see the first analyses the same day, request a demo.