Restaurant Brands deepens search partnership with Optimisers

Restaurant Brands has partnered with The Optimisers following a Google Business Profile optimisation project across the restaurant group's brands.

The work focused on Restaurant Brands' Google Business Profiles, aiming to improve the accuracy, consistency and visibility of its locations in Google Search and Google Maps.

Restaurant Brands operates several quick-service chains in New Zealand, including KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Carl's Jr. The new partnership extends beyond the initial Google-focused work to broader efforts to improve organic search visibility, AI discovery and measurement.

The arrangement reflects a wider shift in how companies think about search as consumers use more ways to find local businesses, restaurants and services online. Alongside standard web search, discovery now happens through maps products, AI-generated answers, social platforms, review sites and other third-party sources.

The Optimisers uses the term Search Everywhere Optimisation for that broader approach. It treats a brand's full digital footprint as part of a single discovery journey rather than viewing each channel separately.

For restaurant groups, local search data has become more important as customers often make quick decisions about where to eat based on what appears in maps, listings and summaries generated by search and AI platforms. That makes details such as store information and location visibility commercially relevant, particularly for brands with large physical networks.

Jason Wong, Ecommerce Manager at Restaurant Brands, said the relationship stood out for its understanding of the wider business rather than a narrow focus on individual search techniques.

"Working with The Optimisers has been a really positive experience. Their expertise in the SEO and GEO space is highly commendable, particularly through the recent Google Business Profile project we partnered on.

"From our initial discovery sessions, they took the time to understand our brands, our customers and our broader business objectives, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. What has stood out for us is their ability to translate that expertise into practical, relevant recommendations that align with our business needs.

"The Optimisers have felt like an extension of our team - a true partner rather than simply an agency. We've valued their strategic thinking, expertise and collaborative approach, and I'm looking forward to continuing to work with them on future projects as we further develop our digital and search capabilities."

Changing search

The project illustrates how search behaviour is fragmenting across multiple platforms. The Optimisers runs an ongoing search research programme and has used studies, including its AI Answers research, to examine how services such as ChatGPT, Google AI and Copilot are influencing discovery.

Richard Conway, Founder at The Optimisers, linked the Restaurant Brands work to that broader change in user behaviour.

"Search hasn't disappeared; it has fragmented and expanded.

"Someone deciding where or what to eat might use Google, Google Maps, an AI answer, a review site or another platform entirely. Increasingly, they may never follow the traditional search journey we've spent the last 20 years optimising for.

"That makes areas such as Google Business Profiles increasingly important. They're not simply business listings anymore; they're a critical source of information for customers and one of the signals search engines and other platforms can use to understand a brand and its locations.

"The Restaurant Brands project is a great example of starting with something practical and measurable, getting the foundations right, and then using data and further analysis to identify where the next opportunities lie.

"We're incredibly pleased to be working with Jason and the Restaurant Brands team. They've been open to new thinking from day one while also challenging us to make sure everything we recommend has a practical commercial outcome behind it. That is exactly the type of partnership we want."

The Optimisers describes Search Everywhere Optimisation as an extension of traditional search engine optimisation rather than a replacement. In practice, that means combining local search work with broader analysis of how a brand appears across AI tools, search engines and other digital sources.

That matters for large consumer-facing businesses because information published in one place can influence visibility elsewhere. Search engines and AI tools often draw on business listings, reviews and third-party references when presenting results, increasing the value of accurate and consistent location data.

Restaurant Brands' decision to continue working with The Optimisers suggests it sees this as more than a narrow technical exercise. The focus now includes measuring where its brands are discovered and identifying how changes in search behaviour affect customer acquisition across its restaurant portfolio.

The project also highlights a broader trend in digital marketing as companies reassess how they appear in systems that do not rely on the traditional list of blue links. For multi-site operators such as Restaurant Brands, local business profiles can now shape how customers encounter a brand across search, mapping and AI-generated responses.

The Optimisers said its approach combines SEO, GEO and AEO, local search, data and analytics to help organisations understand how they are discovered across an increasingly fragmented search landscape.