Hi all,
Just curious if Google has changed it's rules/guidelines around best practice for defining the business category?
My reason for asking is that I've been doing SEO for years and have never had GBP suggest changes to the primary category (or even secondary) of a listing. However, I've noticed it's recently suggested 3 additional business categories for one listing (The auto-suggest feature I know has been around for years - and typically is rubbish as it creates too much clutter & duplicates (in my opinion)for the "Services" section - but I've never seen it flag category changes until today)
What's really interesting is that one of the suggestions are ones which I would say more relate to some of the services, and are tenuous at best. For example, whilst they can help with design of certain elements, I would not say they are an architecture firm. I also wouldn't class them really as a building consultant. (I can't disclose who the company is or what they do sadly)
Interestingly, for this particular client, there is no "Services" tab, and it's used the term "Business Category" rather than "Primary Category", so I wondered if perhaps Google is looking to merge the two?
My understanding is that you should really only choose one category - two at most, and that they should reflect what your company IS (e.g. "We are a.....") rather than what the services (e.g. "We offer..."). Is that still correct?
Perhaps this has been happening for years but it's just the first time I've experienced it with one of our listings, but I wanted to check to ensure my knowledge was still current!
Just curious if Google has changed it's rules/guidelines around best practice for defining the business category?
My reason for asking is that I've been doing SEO for years and have never had GBP suggest changes to the primary category (or even secondary) of a listing. However, I've noticed it's recently suggested 3 additional business categories for one listing (The auto-suggest feature I know has been around for years - and typically is rubbish as it creates too much clutter & duplicates (in my opinion)for the "Services" section - but I've never seen it flag category changes until today)
What's really interesting is that one of the suggestions are ones which I would say more relate to some of the services, and are tenuous at best. For example, whilst they can help with design of certain elements, I would not say they are an architecture firm. I also wouldn't class them really as a building consultant. (I can't disclose who the company is or what they do sadly)
Interestingly, for this particular client, there is no "Services" tab, and it's used the term "Business Category" rather than "Primary Category", so I wondered if perhaps Google is looking to merge the two?
My understanding is that you should really only choose one category - two at most, and that they should reflect what your company IS (e.g. "We are a.....") rather than what the services (e.g. "We offer..."). Is that still correct?
Perhaps this has been happening for years but it's just the first time I've experienced it with one of our listings, but I wanted to check to ensure my knowledge was still current!
