Red Isle WebBefore I build a site for somebody, I look up their Google Business Profile, the free listing that puts a business on the map and in the panel Google shows when somebody searches its name. The category is the first thing I check, and it is wrong more often than you would think. Usually not wrong in a way anybody would notice, just broader than it needs to be. A plumber sitting under Contractor, or a small engine repair shop under Repair Service.
That box gets filled in at nine at night, somewhere near the bottom of a long form, while you are trying to get the thing submitted and the category field wants you to pick one out of more than four thousand. Nobody tells you it is the most important box on the page.
Your primary category is the biggest single thing you control for turning up in local search, and the most specific category that fits what you do will beat a broader one. Small Engine Repair Service over Repair Service. Plumber over Contractor. Then three or four more categories underneath it for the rest of what you do.
How much does the category change things?
Whitespark, a local-search company in Edmonton, went through 1.8 million Google Business Profiles across 4,209 categories and published what they found in August. Businesses on a specific primary category turned up in the top ten results 12.5% of the time. On a broad one, 9.2%. That is roughly 36% more, off one setting.
The exact match won every time they checked, so Hair Salon beat every neighbouring category in hair salon searches and Plumber beat everything else in plumbing searches. There is no clever category sitting off to the side that does better than the obvious one.
Whitespark also runs an annual survey where people who do local search for a living rank what matters most, and the primary category comes out first among the things a business controls. It sits above your reviews, and above anything on your website, including a site I would build you.
What about the extra categories?
BrightLocal checked 1,050 business locations to see whether the extra categories underneath the primary one do anything. The ones carrying four of them averaged rank 5.9. With none at all the average was 7.6, close to two full spots further down the list. Past four or so the gains flatten out.
Every category you add has to be work you do, because categories you have no business being in are the kind of thing that gets a listing suspended. Getting a suspension lifted is a much bigger job than picking the right category.
How do I check mine?
Search your own business name on Google while you are signed in to the account that manages it, and you will get an editing panel instead of the usual result. Open Edit profile, then Business category. The first one listed is your primary and everything under it is additional. Changes usually take a day or two to show up.
To see what the businesses beating you are using, search the thing you want to be found for, tap whoever is sitting at the top, and look under their name in the panel. Google prints the category right there. Check the three above you and you will know inside a minute whether you are even in the same category they are.
"Won't a broader category catch more searches?"
Most owners pick the broad one for that exact reason, on the logic that Restaurant covers more ground than Seafood Restaurant, and Contractor more ground than Plumber. Google reads the category as a description of what kind of business you are, and the specific ones exist because it wants to know which of the four thousand you are. A broad category leaves that question open, and the shop two towns over that answered it clearly gets the spot. You keep the broad reach by adding categories underneath, not by leaving the top one vague.
How close you are to the person searching still counts for a lot, and so do your reviews. The category is not the whole story. Fixing it will not put a Souris business in front of somebody searching in Charlottetown, and anyone who tells you it will is selling you something.
The good news
This costs nothing and takes about five minutes, with nothing to buy and nobody to hire. If you have not looked at your category since the night you set the profile up, there is a fair chance it is broader than it needs to be. Most of the time it is one dropdown and a save button. Go and do it before you finish reading this.
That is the kind of thing I check when I build a site at Red Isle Web, for Island businesses, at a one-time price with no monthly fee. Your website and your Google listing are meant to back each other up. On most of the businesses I look at, they are pulling in different directions. Have a look at my work, or send me a note and I will tell you what I would change your category to and what else your listing is missing.