The one field on your Google listing that decides who finds you

A hair salon in position 7 for “hairdresser near me”. Category: “Beauty salon”. Someone changed it, or it was set that way on day one. Either way, Google has been showing that salon to people looking for nails and waxing, and hiding it from people looking for a haircut.

We see this more often than anything else, and it is the cheapest fix there is.

What the primary category does

Google has a fixed list of a few thousand categories. Your primary one is the main answer to “what is this business”. When someone searches, Google first pulls the listings whose category matches, then sorts them by distance and trust. A listing with the wrong primary category does not get sorted low. It does not get pulled at all.

Secondary categories help, but they are weaker. “Hair salon” as primary with “Beauty salon” as secondary beats the reverse every time for haircut searches.

How to check yours in two minutes

• Search your business name on Google Maps and open the listing. The category shows under the name.
• Then search the term your customers use (“dentist near me”, “pizza near me”) and look at the category of the three businesses on top. That is the category that wins for that search.
• If yours is different, sign in to your Business Profile, edit “Business category”, and set the winning one as primary.

Not sure which term your customers type, or which competitors to look at? A scan shows the three listings ahead of you and their categories. See what Watch would tell you about your listing, $29 a month.

Watch out for the quiet change

Anyone can suggest an edit to a Google listing, and Google sometimes applies it without asking. Categories get changed this way. If your calls dropped and you did nothing, this is one of the first things to look at, and the reason it is worth having something check the listing every week rather than once.