Will Changing Primary Category Trigger Reverification?

[ABran]

I have a client who is a pharmaceutical training company. Their sole purpose is to train in the life sciences field but the person who set up the listing made "pharmaceutical company" the primary category. I would like to change it to education center or training center but if I do that will it trigger reverification? They are doing well for their focus keywords.

I appreciate any insight!

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@ABran I don't have a definitive answer but can share that I recently changed the primary category for one of my clients without trigger re-verification.

I suspect that a change involving more spam-sensitive categories (e.g. locksmith, garage door) might be different.

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@ABran - @BenFisher confirmed my suspicion. He warns "Changing your category (especially your primary one) can force a re-verification." in this post on the BrightLocal blog. Worth the read!

 

[BenFisher]

It is rare but it can happen, what is more likely is a potential suspension.

 

[ABran]

@BenFisher @Stefan Somborac Would you suggest I leave it in that case since they are still performing well for their keywords?

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@ABran - In my experience, I've never had a problem changing categories. I'd make sure you've got good conversion tracking in place (conversions, not ranking), make the change and measure the results to see if there is any improvement.

 

[Angel]

Hi! I'm trying to understand this behaviour too. In my company, we experimented this with a couple of clients changing the primary category to a "totally" different one, that triggered the manual re-verification

However, changing the primary category in other different verticals didn't trigger the re-verification.

At the moment of writing this comment I still investigating if there is a pattern.