Google Adds 1000+ New Local Business Categories on the International Front

[Linda Buquet]

I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to add international business categories in all the different languages. But based on feedback from us and from merchants, the Google Local team has been working on it. Jade just let us know that over 1000 categories are being added in all the languages that Places for Business currently supports.

Improvements to international categories!

Based on merchant feedback, we?ve been working to improve business categories. One of the key areas we thought we could quickly improve is expanding the breadth of available categories globally.

So you might be wondering: why hadn?t we already done that? Well, international business categorization is quite tricky. Imagine you?re planning a trip to Greece.

When you search from the US, you?ll probably be using English, and you?ll see the categories of Greek businesses in English. However, those businesses in Greece were probably set in Greek using Places for Business in Greek. This means the Places for Business team has to translate and associate categories in many languages. As you can imagine, this can become very complicated very quickly.

Today, we are taking a first step of many to improve categories that merchants can use to represent their businesses. Specifically, we?re adding over 1,000 new categories in the new Places dashboard. These categories are available globally and translated to every language Google supports.

Last but not least, thanks to our Top Contributors and all the merchants who gave us great feedback. We?re indeed listening!

-Jade, Google Business Community Manager

So if you deal with international clients and have been held back by the lack of categories, this should be welcome news.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I love to see this kind of stuff happening with Google Places.

Thanks Linda and all the other Google Places TC's!