Hi all,
I was wondering why we don’t have the ability to update categories on our own? And going forward, if I wanted to update my categories for a particular location, how can I go about doing so?
Thanks in advance!
Hi Francisco,
If you are a small business, you should be able to update your categories.
For any multi-location brands, we have moved this to be handled by our support team. If you have the need to update a category, you can reach out to them to assist you. The reason is that categories, and the integrity of the ones chosen, are very important to our Listings Publishers and therefore to your brand’s presence. For example, if you’re a grocery store chain and you update your primary category to be “Cheese Shop” that is not an accurate representation of your business. We’ve found that working with our team in a consultative way to advise on setting your categories is a win for the customer and win for the publisher – and therefore a win for Yext. We’ll help to advise when a change might not be in your best interest, or even advocate on your behalf if a publisher pushes back on a selection (which they often do!).
Here’s a great resource to read directly from Google about selecting categories:
It provides a lot of great tips, like:
- Pick as few categories that best fit your business. Adding too many categories can actually hurt you.
- Categories are not keywords
- You should focus primarily on adding the most specific categories for your business; Google (and other publisher) will do the rest behind the scenes. (e.g., if you are a French restaurant and have French Restaurant as a category, you don’t also need Restaurant)
- If your business contains another business that your organization does not own and operate, only use categories that represent your business.