{"id":81,"date":"2007-01-10T20:45:12","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T00:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=81"},"modified":"2007-01-11T18:14:28","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T22:14:28","slug":"google-maps-now-displaying-business-category","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/2007\/01\/10\/google-maps-now-displaying-business-category\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Maps now displaying business category"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"right\" alt=\"Google Maps with Category description\" id=\"image82\" title=\"Google Maps with Category description\" src=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/01\/mapsnewinfo.jpg\" \/>Google Maps has recently added a new piece of information with a business: their category. Whether this is a test or a permanent addition is unclear.<\/p>\n<p>What is clear is that it is not done with consistency with a given search. The reasons for this are not obvious. For example on the search (inside of Google Maps) &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/maps?hl=en&#038;lr=&#038;client=safari&#038;rls=en&#038;q=web+design&#038;near=Olean,+NY+14760&#038;sa=X&#038;oi=local&#038;ct=title\">web design Olean NY<\/a>&#8221; some businesses have no category listed, some have the one category description and others have a different category (obviously provided by different 3rd party providers). Google <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.com\/group\/Google-Maps-For-Business-Owners\/browse_thread\/thread\/840165f28f70c2a3\/ccc5775f83360492?lnk=gst&#038;q=categories&#038;rnum=1&#038;hl=en#ccc5775f83360492\">has acknowledged<\/a> that these categories are from other data providers.<\/p>\n<p>I have noted in a <a href=\"http:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/?p=76\">previous post<\/a> how this can play out in unusual ways and the likely source for the data. Another outcome of the use of categories from other sources is that it <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.com\/group\/Google-Maps-For-Business-Owners\/browse_thread\/thread\/bb543af081af1c28?hl=en\">leads to small business frustration<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>With this new change that shows the  3rd party category, there is more transparency as to why a listing is where it is but there is still no option to include your specific business in this category.<\/p>\n<p>As sophisticated as Google&#8217;s local algorithm is one would think that they could come up with a single comprehensive list of categories that would be transparently available to every business in their local database.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google Maps has recently added a new piece of information with a business: their category. Whether this is a test or a permanent addition is unclear. What is clear is that it is not done with consistency with a given search. The reasons for this are not obvious. For example on the search (inside of &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-google-maps-google-local"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blumenthals.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}