I found out today what happens when google deletes a vertical you're using

[JS Girard]

Initially, my coworker was mostly wondering why Google had seemingly made an edit replacing the main category "establishment" with a normal one, since they had never seen the "establishment" category (I've seen "service establishment", but I still didn't quite understand what was going on). Also they couldn't click on "ok" as it was triggering an error message.

"try again later" my ass. that error message is impossible to clear without manually doing the edit. So we went in, and that's when we discovered there was no main category assigned to the GBP. Which somehow prevented us from just clicking "ok" to accept the edit. I've encountered a similar phenomenon before when hiding the address and edits to the service area are done simultaneously and end up creating a conflict

But like, what the hell? How can a GBP end up with no main category at all?

Now, I happened to know that the main category for that GBP was "Commercial Refrigeration". That category does not have a name in French, so I thought it was just another iteration of Google doing shenanigans about categories that are not yet translated (see the section "Google does not use my main category" in my bug compendium). because of that I didn't think of taking a screenshot.

So, we know that occasionally Google will delete a category in Google Maps, right?. And later it hit me, and after checking with PlePer's category tool, I confirmed that the vertical had been deleted entirely. So now we know what happens in that very unusual scenario: a weird bug forces you to manually edit your categories because you cannot accept the automatic edit. If you have an automatic edit reverter... I'd love to know how that plays out lol.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing!

 

[dale-jepto]

I noticed the same situation, but the outcome was very different.

In this scenario, Google also deleted the category (Commercial cleaning service) that was being used as the primary category. But instead of leaving it with nothing set, they edited the profile to a close match (cleaning service).

My assumption here is that Google will try to replace the removed category wherever possible, but in scenarios where it isn't highly confident in a replacement, it has no option but to leave it blank.

I'm going to look a bit deeper into the recent category changes as there might be more to this since both of these categories have 'commercial' in them.

 

[JS Girard]

I noticed the same situation, but the outcome was very different.

In this scenario, Google also deleted the category (Commercial cleaning service) that was being used as the primary category. But instead of leaving it with nothing set, they edited the profile to a close match (cleaning service).

My assumption here is that Google will try to replace the removed category wherever possible, but in scenarios where it isn't highly confident in a replacement, it has no option but to leave it blank.

I'm going to look a bit deeper into the recent category changes as there might be more to this since both of these categories have 'commercial' in them.

We,re talking about the same thing. You're showing from an external API side. I'm talking about the presentation when you're on the GBP directly, it's one of these king of things (except for categories, obvs.).

Your system detects a change from "commercial cleaning service" to "cleaning service" because it's set to detect anything other than "commercial cleaning service". What Google appears to actually do is remove the category, then separately adding the replacement, causing this weird change from "establishment" to "CVC contractor" to be shown for me.

Except, as I was saying, clicking on "OK" triggers an error message (something I've usually seen for attribute edits) and will never work. You have to go in manually and make the edit yourself.

So... What happens if you click on "resolve"?

 

[sarmcl]

I noticed the same situation, but the outcome was very different.

In this scenario, Google also deleted the category (Commercial cleaning service) that was being used as the primary category. But instead of leaving it with nothing set, they edited the profile to a close match (cleaning service).

My assumption here is that Google will try to replace the removed category wherever possible, but in scenarios where it isn't highly confident in a replacement, it has no option but to leave it blank.

I'm going to look a bit deeper into the recent category changes as there might be more to this since both of these categories have 'commercial' in them.

We just found out about this category deletion and were just floored by it. Why would Google remove this? Its tough when there are both residential and commercial cleaning services.

 

[dale-jepto]

@JS Girard I get what you are saying now. Here is the screen you were referring to with the error. I was able to inspect the API call that Google makes when you click the OK button, and you can see that they are throwing an error because of the primary category.

I also checked the current state of the location from the API and it looks as though they haven't changed the category ID.