Local Business Categories

What are local business categories?

“Local business categories” are the terms that describe what type of business your company is. These are selected when creating local business listings. For example, a legal firm may select the business category “Criminal Justice Attorney,” “Personal Injury Attorney,” or “Law Firm.” It’s similar to the way businesses used to choose which section of the print Yellow Pages they’d appear in; your local business categories tell search engines which types of searches you’re relevant to.

Each time you create a new Google Business Profile listing (or nearly any other local business listing), you’ll be given a choice of how to categorize the business. Google, for example, allows you to choose up to 10 categories from their pre-set list. Failure to properly categorize your business can have a profoundly negative impact on your company’s ability to rank in Google’s local results packs.

For example:

  • Pizza companies offering pizza takeout and delivery, but not on-premises dining should use the category "Pizza Delivery" and the additional category "Pizza Takeout" (instead of the less specific "Delivery Restaurant" or "Takeout Restaurant").
  • Navy Federal Credit Union should use the category "Federal Credit Union" (rather than the less specific "Bank").
  • Super 8 is a motel with an onsite swimming pool. It should use the category "Motel" rather than "Hotel" and should not include "Swimming Pool" as a category.
  • 24-Hour Fitness should choose the category "Health Club" (and not its amenities, "Gym" or "Swimming Pool").
  • A1 Check Cashing should use the category "Check Cashing Service" (rather than the less specific "Banking and Finance").
  • Fast food hamburger restaurants that also offer some desserts on its menu should choose the category "Fast Food Restaurant," and the additional category "Hamburger Restaurant," but not use the category "Dessert Restaurant."

*Note: If your business is contained within another business or is co-located at the same physical location, you should read the entire Category section of the guidelines for further instructions.

Correct categorization is so important that Google devotes a whole section to explaining their preferred category practices in their guidelines, which reads:

Categories help your customers find accurate, specific results for services they’re interested in. In order to keep your business information accurate and live, make sure that you:
  • Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business from the provided list.
  • Choose categories that are as specific as possible, but representative of your main business.
  • Do not use categories solely as keywords or to describe attributes of your business.
  • Do not use categories that pertain to other businesses that are nearby or related, such as a business physically contained within your business or an entity that contains your business.

You should focus primarily on adding the most specific categories for your business. For instance, when you select a specific category like "Golf Resort," Google implicitly includes more general categories like "Resort Hotel," "Hotel," and "Golf Course." Feel free to skip adding any category that’s already covered by a more specific category you selected. If you can't find a category for your business, choose one that is more general. Google can also detect category information from your website and from mentions about your business across the web.

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Finding your local business categories

Each local business listing platform has its own category taxonomy, so you’ll need to discover what’s available as you create each citation and then choose best-match options.

If your business lies within an especially unique niche, you may not discover ideal categories in Google’s category base or the category sets of other platforms. Instead, you’ll have to pick the closest match you can find, relying on the business description, photos, and your business’ website to further clarify the exact nature of the company’s services. Fortunately, this scenario is typically the exception rather than the rule, and most businesses will be able to find at least one good, relevant category.

Understanding category gray areas

There are two lines in Google’s guidelines that have led to some industry controversy and good dialogue. They are:

  • Use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business from the provided list.
  • Choose categories that are as specific as possible, but representative of your main business.

While Google allows you to choose up to 10, their guidelines seem to indicate that they want you to choose the smallest number of highly specific categories as possible.

These seemingly contradictory guidelines have sometimes misled people to believe they’ll rank higher if they only choose one or two categories. However, at least one interesting study found that decreasing the number of their categories also significantly decreased visibility. When the author of the study removed 4 of the 5 categories on a car dealership listing so that only the “Toyota Dealership” category remained, they went from ranking #1 in the local packs across 36 searches to ranking #1 in just 16 of them. This study shows the importance of experimenting with categories and tracking the results of changes you might make.

There has also been some industry confusion about the exact meaning of “as few” and “specific.” We’ll paraphrase local SEO expert and Google forum Top Contributor Mike Blumenthal’s excellent clarification based on his interactions with Google staff:

What Google means is that you shouldn’t choose both a general category and a specific category. They don’t mean that you shouldn’t choose all available categories that are relevant to your business. For example, don’t choose both “New Car Dealer” and “Toyota Dealer,” because it’s redundant. But, if you own a “French Restaurant” that is also a “Bakery,” feel free to select both categories, because they aren’t redundant. According to my conversations with Google, their guidelines about choosing the most specific category only apply within one category type.

Considering all of the above advice, it’s clear that while it’s important to avoid spammy repetition in your categories, they’re also an area you’ll want to experiment with and track your results. Pay attention to how your competitors are categorizing themselves by using a Chrome extension like GMBSpy to reveal all of the competition's chosen categories.

Correct categorization has a big impact on whether you’re considered a relevant result for the searches that matter most to your business. When building your local business listings, double check that you’re handling the category field with appropriate thought and care.

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