{"id":14532,"date":"2013-04-02T19:40:13","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T23:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=14532"},"modified":"2013-12-04T21:17:04","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T01:17:04","slug":"categories-in-the-new-places-for-business-dashboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/02\/categories-in-the-new-places-for-business-dashboard\/","title":{"rendered":"Categories in the new Places for Business Dashboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ScreenOne of the big changes in the rollout of the new Places for Business Dashboard is a change with categories. Categories have long been a key factor in Google’s determination of relevance of a listing. Google has added some additional categories, changed how categories are handled as well how many categories a business is allowed to have.<\/p>\n

The bad news? The big change, \u00a0predicted for some time, is the elimination of the option of custom categories. Google has moved to a fixed list of choices.<\/p>\n

The synonym feature is also missing. Thus a user that doesn’t know exactly what they want in terms of categories will find it very hard to locate the correct categories.<\/p>\n

The good news? Up to ten categories are allowed. Google has noted at the most recent LocalU seminar that categorical information about a business is retrieved from across the internet. Exactly what web based resources are likely to impact this are not totally clear.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The category list is a dramatic improvement over what is\/was available to businesses that verified via the G+ Page local interface and the list is very similar to those categories previously available<\/a> to users of the current Dashboard.<\/p>\n

There appear to be some additional categories in the new list, particularly in the area of restaurants. Upon an initial and superficial check I could not find additional categories in other areas besides restaurants although there may be a few.\u00a0In the previous category list there were 76 types of restaurants<\/a>. In the new category list there are 230 restaurant types<\/a>. For example Google added the following restaurant types (amongst others):<\/p>\n

Tongue Restaurant
\nUzbeki Restaurant
\nSouthwest France Restaurant<\/p>\n

I am curious whether a “Tongue Restaurant” is what it sounds like? Why exactly do we need the category “Southwest France Restaurant”?<\/p>\n

The new list contains a total 2295 category choices. I am including the complete Places for Business category list <\/a>(US only) here in HTML format and hope to have the list integrated with my Google Places category tool<\/a> in the near future.<\/p>\n

Related posts:<\/p>\n

Google rolling out new update to Google Places for Business<\/a><\/p>\n

Visual Guide to the new Places for Business Dashboard\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Analysis: Google Places for Business or G+ Pages Lite?<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the big changes in the rollout of the new Places for Business Dashboard is a change with categories. Categories have long been a key factor in Google’s determination of relevance of a listing. Google has added some additional categories, changed how categories are handled as well how many categories a business is allowed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,24,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local","category-google-plus","category-whats-new-important"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t