GMB Primary Category no longer available but still used by competitors

[Lester Sharpe]

Hi. I have a question about GMB primary categories and how to deal with changes.

In Canada, "home inspector" used to be a GMB category and that is the category presently used by nearly every home inspector in my city. "Home inspector(s)" is also the most commonly used search term when people are looking for a pre-purchase home inspection.

"Home inspector" is now no longer available as a GMB category in Canada, and the closest one is "building inspector". Nor can "home inspector" be added as a related category. "Building inspector" in Canada commonly refers to municipal inspectors checking compliance with building code regulations during construction - it is not a term usually applied to the services of home inspectors associated with the real estate home sales industry.

Somehow, as a result of my inexperience and lack of knowledge, I appear to have changed my "home inspector" category that I had used for several years to "building inspector" and now cannot change it back or even add it as a related category.

In her informative article 7 things you might not know about Google My Business categories Joy Hawkins point out that "According to Moz’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, proper Google My Business category associations are the #3 search ranking factor for local packs."

Not being able to use the same category as nearly all of my competitors (20 or so of them) would seem to be quite a disadvantage when trying to compete in local search. I'm constantly working on making sure the site will perform well in organic search and unless I'm mistaken, the GMB category has only minimal if any effect on organic rank. But I want to perform in the local pack as well.

Is there anything I can do that will let me use the same GMB categories as everyone else for local search?
Does anyone have any other ideas, such as perhaps contacting Google and requesting that they re-introduce "home inspector" as a category in Canada?

Or am I worrying too much about this?

Thanks. This forum helped me out a lot a couple of years ago so here I am again.

 

[dgrunited]

Hi. I have a question about GMB primary categories and how to deal with changes.

In Canada, "home inspector" used to be a GMB category and that is the category presently used by nearly every home inspector in my city. "Home inspector(s)" is also the most commonly used search term when people are looking for a pre-purchase home inspection.

"Home inspector" is now no longer available as a GMB category in Canada, and the closest one is "building inspector". Nor can "home inspector" be added as a related category. "Building inspector" in Canada commonly refers to municipal inspectors checking compliance with building code regulations during construction - it is not a term usually applied to the services of home inspectors associated with the real estate home sales industry.

Somehow, as a result of my inexperience and lack of knowledge, I appear to have changed my "home inspector" category that I had used for several years to "building inspector" and now cannot change it back or even add it as a related category.

In her informative article 7 things you might not know about Google My Business categories Joy Hawkins point out that "According to Moz’s Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, proper Google My Business category associations are the #3 search ranking factor for local packs."

Not being able to use the same category as nearly all of my competitors (20 or so of them) would seem to be quite a disadvantage when trying to compete in local search. I'm constantly working on making sure the site will perform well in organic search and unless I'm mistaken, the GMB category has only minimal if any effect on organic rank. But I want to perform in the local pack as well.

Is there anything I can do that will let me use the same GMB categories as everyone else for local search?
Does anyone have any other ideas, such as perhaps contacting Google and requesting that they re-introduce "home inspector" as a category in Canada?

Or am I worrying too much about this?

Thanks. This forum helped me out a lot a couple of years ago so here I am again.

Just optimise your "home inspector" landing page with relevant keywords related to "home inspector".

 

[Lester Sharpe]

Thanks dgrunited. That's good advice. I've been working on doing that and hopefully the results will show up eventually.
I'm just trying out Rank Math by the way. I've used Yoast for years but they charge for Local SEO while Rank Math includes it free. We'll see how it goes.
Cheers. HS.