Adding or Changing Business Categories

As a general rule, you should not change your Primary Category, and you should not change secondary / additional categories frequently. However, there may be situations where you need to add or remove categories, for example if you add or remove service offerings in your business. In such cases, you'll likely need to make category changes to ensure the correct information is available online.

What is important for me to know about updating Primary Categories?

Your business's Primary Category, which was selected during Step 1 of Online Presence Management setup, makes sure publishers know how to index your business properly. Once your Primary Category has been established ‒ that is, once your listings are live across all digital publishers ‒ is not recommended to update your Primary Category more than once.

What do I need to know about secondary categories?

Secondary (or "additional") categories can supplement your Primary Category by broadening the search criteria used to capture and list your business. Here are a few tips on selecting secondary categories:

  • Any category you select should complete the statement "This business IS ___" rather than "This business offers ___."
  • You can add up to 10 categories, but we recommend selecting no more than 5 total categories, since search engines don't prioritize results for businesses with many categories. The sweet spot for most businesses will be 3 or 4 total categories (1 Primary Category and 2 or 3 secondary categories).
  • We also highly recommend reading Google's policy on category selection, which you can find in their local business guidelines.

What is important for me to know about updating secondary / additional categories?

Once your listings are live across all digital publishers, it is not recommend that you add or remove secondary categories frequently, as such changes can negatively impact search performance: publisher sites consider frequently updated categories to be a sign of potential spam, and the Google Business Profile even requires re-verification if you add or update categories.

To update a Primary Category

We do not recommend you update a Primary Category more than once.

  1. Go to Marketing > Online Presence Settings or type onlinepresencesettings into the Convobar.
  2. Select a new Primary Category.
  3. When ready, sync the new Primary Category to Local SEO Profile Settings.

To add secondary categories

It is not recommended that you add or remove secondary categories frequently.

  1. Go to Marketing > Local SEO Profile Settings or type localseosettings into the Convobar.
  2. Edit the Categories field and select Add a category under ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES.
  3. Start typing in the field to bring up category matches, and select the category.
  4. When finished, select Save.
  5. A pop-up warning message provides details on the potential consequences of changing your categories. Select I'd like to change my categories to proceed, or Keep Current Categories to undo your edits.

To remove secondary categories

It is not recommended that you add or remove secondary categories frequently.

  1. Go to Marketing > Local SEO Profile Settings or type localseosettings into the Convobar.
  2. Edit the Categories field and select the trash can icon beside the category.
  3. A pop-up warning message provides details on the potential consequences of changing your categories. Select I'd like to change my categories to proceed, or Keep Current Categories to undo your edits.