Free Chrome Extension for viewing GMB Categories

[georgenenni]

Version 1.2 of the GMBspy Chrome extension is now live and available for free download from the Chrome Store. Version 1.2 now allows spying in both Google.com/maps and Google.com/search. This version also includes new "Copy to Clipboard" feature.

Click here to download from the Chrome Store:
https://bit.ly/GMBspy

 

[Shihab]

WOW! Really awesome

 

[annenustart]

Thanks @georgenenni - This is exactly what I was looking for - Great tool and very useful

 

[Sherry Bonelli]

This is cool! Thanks for sharing. Does it show the categories in the order the business has them selected (i.e. primary category is listed first in the extension tool)?

Thanks again. Well done!

Sherry

 

[georgenenni]

Hey @Sherry Bonelli great question! Upon checking it is Primary first, then looks to be alphabetical, which is not how we want it. I know we specified that the primary would be first (which it currently is) but didn't determine an order for the rest. I'll get with development and have them fix on next version. I would prefer the order match exactly as entered into GMB (as I assume most/all on this thread would agree). Thank you for catching that.

 

[Sherry Bonelli]

Hey @Sherry Bonelli great question! Upon checking it is Primary first, then looks to be alphabetical, which is not how we want it. I know we specified that the primary would be first (which it currently is) but didn't determine an order for the rest. I'll get with development and have them fix on next version. I would prefer the order match exactly as entered into GMB (as I assume most/all on this thread would agree). Thank you for catching that.

Perfect! The order matching as it is entered in GMB would absolutely be preferred. Thanks for the clarification. Great tool!

 

[brdoane]

THANK YOU! This is awesome!

 

[georgenenni]

Perfect! The order matching as it is entered in GMB would absolutely be preferred. Thanks for the clarification. Great tool!

@Sherry Bonelli in digging deeper, it turns out that GMBspy simply reads the categories in the same order they are entered in the HTML, which is the Primary category first, then alphabetical. We know of no way (without admin access) to know the true order of the categories after the primary.

 

[SmallBizGeek]

This is a great plugin. I'll be recommending it to clients. I have to ask though, how much of a ranking factor are GMB categories? I've seen some businesses that have no categories whatsoever, yet they do have a ton of reviews.

 

[georgenenni]

Agreed @SmallBizGeek, there are many signals, and we all know that keywords in reviews, sometimes Q&A, and onsite indexing matter. I've been playing around a ton with the extension, especially with national brands who tend to cookie cutter their categories across franchisees or locations. Burger King has the Impossible Burger, trying to hit the vegan/vegetarian segment. However, they do not score for me on "vegetarian restaurant near me", and most Burger Kings have one category, "Fast food restaurant". Big missed opportunity IMHO!

 

[Lluc]

Thank you! This is is super useful, congratulations.

 

[webforu]

This is great! Thank you for creating and sharing. #kudos

 

[localguide1]

Awesome little tool..
Thanks for sharing @georgenenni

 

[djbaxter]

Awesome little tool..

That seems a bit rude. Who are you referring to?

 

[localguide1]

That seems a bit rude. Who are you referring to?

I was referring to the chrome extension GMBSpy.

 

[djbaxter]

Sorry. I knew that... I was just making a silly joke.

 

[georgenenni]

Version 1.4 of our GMBspy Chrome extension is now live and available for free download from the Chrome Store. This is our official international version, supporting google.co.uk, google.es, google.com.ca and others domains. I just ran some tests and everything seems to be working as designed, please share your feedback, thank you!

Click here to download from the Chrome Store:
https://bit.ly/GMBspy

 

[Tim Colling]

GMB Spy / GMBSpy has stopped working for me. Is it working for everyone else?

 

[georgenenni]

Hey @Tim Colling sorry to hear there is an issue. Are you on the latest version? We haven't updated in 7 days and had reports of all known issues resolved as of the weekend before last. If you can share a screenshot and/or description of the issue, we'll work to duplicate.

 

[Tim Colling]

How about this: give me an example of a query that you are confident to be able to trigger the extension to work, and then I'll test with it.

The version is 0.15 and I'm using the latest version of Chrome. This happens in incognito mode, too.