Primary Category

This is regarded as one of the core decisions for each location and is therefore also rather complicated. A primary category should be a descriptor of your business as a whole, as it's the top factor that goes into ranking, aside from your physical location. Without a fitting primary category, you cannot rank for your most valuable searches.

Ultimately, when choosing your primary category, it is better to be as specific as possible. For instance, if you own a chain of pizza restaurants that offer delivery and takeout, your primary category should either be Pizza Delivery or Pizza Takeout (as opposed to the less specific Delivery Restaurant or Takeout Restaurant).

Additional Categories

Google currently has over 3,900 different categories, and while there is some industry controversy around how many additional categories a GBP page should have, there doesn't seem to be any drawback from having more than a few.

Additional categories should be complementary to the primary, and it's also important to keep additional categories as relevant as possible. In the example before, if the restaurant was an Italian pizza joint that also offered table dining, they could add Italian restaurant as an additional category. If they truly specialized in a region they could add Northern Italian restaurant or Southern Italian restaurant. The general rule for additional categories is, "describe, don't spam or be redundant".

Make sure that these secondary categories don't stray too far away from main selection. The driving purpose behind adding this content is to enhance it and make it useful for customers.

Although deciding on categories is just one aspect of the entire task, ensure that you're handling categorization with thought and care.

How many categories should you choose?

While only one primary category will be shown on your listing in the knowledge panel, adding several that will help define your niche and products or services can be beneficial. The best practice is to add all of the relevant categories for your business. Take a broad approach, but don’t spam.

Here is a tip to see what additional categories your (well-ranking) competitors are using. Since only the primary is shown, there is a bit of a hack that you need to use to see your competitors hidden additional categories. This is next level bonus stuff, right here!

1. Search your competitor by name on Google Maps. (It needs to be directly on Maps)
2. The auto-complete should find the business, once you see it, select it from the drop-down.
3. Copy the primary category that your competitor is using. You will be using this in step 5 below.
4. Right-click and select, “View Page Source”.
5. Using Command+F search for the primary category
6. You will find a bit of code that looks like the following examples:
   some text
   1. Starbucks location “\"Coffee shop\",\"Coffee\",\"Coffee Container\",\"Tea and coffee merchant\".
      Marketing agency “\"Marketing agency\",\"E-commerce\",\"Advertising\",\"Digital media\",\"Business service\",\"Corporate office\",\"Software company\",\"Market researcher\",\"Services companies\",\"Internet marketing service\",\"Business to business service\",\"Information and technology services\

Please know that these list contain both self-assigned and Google-assigned categories. For example, LocalClarity self assigns as Software company, Marketing agency, Marketing consultant, but the Google map result shows the following:

1. \"Software company\",\"Advertising\",\"Business service\",\"Marketing agency\",\"Services companies\",\"Marketing consultant\",\"Information and technology services\“
   

For additional questions, contact [email protected]

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