Adjusting Primary for Only 1 GBP Location

[fredmcjunkins]

Hello, I manage about 50 GBP locations for the same business. A couple of years ago, Google released a more applicable category and we made the change to every listing. Since the change, we are seeing calls from the listings drastically decline. There are other factors potentially involved, but we currently have 1 suspended listing. Could we use this suspension to test reverting back to the original category? It is still very much applicable, just broader. We are hesitant to make any adjustments, especially at the category level.

Is it against best practices to not have every listing exactly the same? We would put the more applicable category as our secondary category.

Thanks!

 

[JS Girard]

It's possible the new category is not associated with the keywords people are actually using, especially if it's a new one. Unless the category name matches EXACTLY your core keyword or vertical name, reverting may be better and just using the new category as a secondary one instead seems perfectly legitimate.

Have you verified for other factors that the category itself? Have rankings changed?

Verifying what the SERP page actually looks like for your business-driving keywords is usually a good idea. We've seen clients start receiving less calls in the past because a lucky competitor was now showing a right-hand panel for certain keywords.