Category that competitor is using doesn't exist...?

[WAHamilton]

@JoyHawkins That's weird because the GmB page now has Janitorial Service as a category (as opposed to Cleaning Service, which it had before). I'm still seeing them in Maps/Local Pack as well. Is this change anticipated to take some time to roll out in all geos? Not sure what to make of this...

 

[JoyHawkins]

@WAHamilton - so to make things even more complicated, it looks like Google Maps still has the category. GMB categories don't always match Google Maps. If you really want the category, pull up the listing on Google Maps and you can suggest an edit and change the category.

1. It will change the primary category (there is no option in Maps to add additional categories).
2. I'm very curious to see if it impacts ranking. If you end up doing this, please report back on what happened. If you want to PM me before doing the change, I can also set up a tracker to see what happens.

 

[WAHamilton]

@JoyHawkins -- To be honest, I don't think I'm going to try this experiment, simply because the client is more B2B-focused and changing their primary category doesn't make much sense (Commercial cleaning service). They are performing fairly well in their main community. I will keep it in mind for the future.

 

[JoyHawkins]

So just updating this yet again. It looks like one of the ones that was called Cleaning Service before was renamed to Janitorial Service in GMB so Google did only delete 1 category, they just renamed the other.