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Categories are essential identifiers that describe your business and help customers find you when searching for specific services. They play a crucial role in local search rankings and determine which attributes, services, menus, and place action links are available for your business listings.
Categories are one of the key factors that affect your business’s local ranking on Google and other directories. Choose them carefully to maximize your visibility.

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Understanding Categories

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What Are Business Categories?

Business categories are standardized labels that describe what your business does. They help search engines and directory platforms understand your business type and connect you with relevant customer searches.
Screenshot showing the display of the main business category on a Google Business Profile listing

The primary category of your business (highlighted in red) is prominently displayed on your Google Business Profile listing.

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Why Categories Matter

  • Local search ranking: Categories directly influence how well your business ranks in local search results
  • Data availability: Your selected categories determine which Google Business Profile attributes, services, menus, and place action links you can use
  • Customer discovery: Well-chosen categories help customers find your business when searching for specific services

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Category Standards

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Google Business Profile as the Source

Partoo uses Google Business Profile as the single source of truth for categories. This approach ensures:
  • Relevance: Google leverages search data to build the most comprehensive category catalog
  • Completeness: If a category exists on Google Business Profile, it’s available in Partoo

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Automatic Synchronization

Our category catalog stays current through daily synchronization with Google Business Profile:
  • New categories: Automatically added when Google creates them
  • Removed categories: Marked as obsolete when Google removes them
  • Updated names: Category names are updated to match Google’s changes

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Category Selection Best Practices

1

Choose Your Primary Category Carefully

Your primary category (first in the list) is the most important. Select the most specific category that accurately describes your core business.Note that your choice of primary category will also affect what Attributes, Services, Menu options, and Place Action Links are available for your business. These are additional details that help customers learn more about your business, such as Wi-Fi available or Outdoor seating for attributes, specific services you offer, the possibility to add a food menu, or actionable links like Order Online.The reason for this is that for certain categories, certain options are more relevant than others. For example, a Coffee Shop might have attributes related to seating options and the possibility of adding a menu, while a Plumber would have attributes related to service areas and specific services offered.
When you select a specific category like “Pizza Restaurant,” your business will also appear in searches for broader related categories like “Restaurant.”
2

Add Relevant Additional Categories

Include up to 10 categories total, but focus on quality over quantity. Each additional category should represent a genuine service or product you offer. Order matters for your additional categories since different platforms have varying limits - some only use your first 3-4 categories. List your most important additional categories first to ensure they’re included across all platforms.
Adding irrelevant categories can hurt your local SEO performance.
3

Ensure All of Your Categories Are Relevant

For each category, ask yourself: “If customers search for this category and find my business, will they click?” If the answer is no, don’t use that category.

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Category Limits by Platform

While Google accepts up to 10 categories, other platforms have different limits:
  • Google Business Profile: Up to 10 categories
  • Facebook: First 4 categories only
  • Hoodspot: First 3 categories only
  • Apple: Primary category only
  • Le118000: Primary category only
We recommend defining at least 5 relevant categories to maximize visibility while maintaining quality.

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Category Mapping

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Publisher-Specific Mappings

Each publisher platform has its own category system. We maintain mappings between Google Business Profile categories and equivalent categories on other platforms.

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Missing Mappings

Occasionally, new categories may not have mappings for all publishers. We continuously monitor for these gaps and work to establish appropriate mappings as quickly as possible.

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Updating Categories for Your Businesses

You can easily manage your business categories through the Partoo web application. The interface provides suggestions and allows you to add multiple categories to optimize your local search visibility.

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Accessing the Categories Section

1

Navigate to Your Business

From your dashboard, select the business you want to update categories for. You’ll see the Business Edit page where you can update your business data, including categories.
Business dashboard showing category section
2

Find the Categories Section

In the “Describe your activity” section, you’ll see the Categories option. This section shows your current primary category and allows you to add additional categories.
The green checkmark indicates that you have at least one category configured for your business.

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Adding and Managing Categories

1

Select Your Primary Category

Choose the main category that best describes your business from the dropdown menu. This will be your most important category for search rankings.
The Categories page showing primary category selection

Selecting a primary category from the dropdown menu.

2

Add Additional Categories

In the “Additional categories” field, you can search for and add additional categories that represent other services or aspects of your business.
The Categories page with suggested additional categories based on the primary category

When selecting additional categories, the interface provides intelligent suggestions based on your primary category.

The interface provides intelligent suggestions to help you find relevant additional categories. These suggestions come from analyzing category combinations across all businesses on the Partoo platform. For example, Pizza restaurant businesses commonly also use Pizza delivery, Pizza takeaway, and Italian restaurant.
3

Review Your Selection

As you add categories, they appear as tags that you can easily remove by clicking the ”×” button if needed. The interface shows a counter (e.g., “8/9”) indicating how many categories you’ve selected out of the maximum allowed.
The Categories page showing selected primary and additional categories

A great selection of primary and additional categories.

Remember that quality is more important than quantity. Choose only categories that genuinely represent your business offerings.
4

Save Your Changes

After selecting your categories, save your changes to update your business profile across all connected platforms.

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Using the REST API to Manage Categories

You can programmatically manage business categories through our REST API. The following endpoints provide complete category management functionality:

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Category Discovery Endpoints

MethodNameEndpointDescription
GETList categories/api/v2/categoriesList and filter through all available Partoo categories
GETGet category/api/v2/categories/{category_id}Retrieve detailed information about a specific category
GETGet suggested categories/api/v2/categories/{category_id}/suggestedGet recommended additional categories based on an existing category

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Business Management Endpoints

MethodNameEndpointDescription
POSTCreate business/api/v2/businessesCreate a new business with categories
POSTUpdate business/api/v2/businesses/{business_id}Update an existing business, including its categories

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Complete Workflow Example

Here is how you can use these endpoints together to implement a complete category management workflow:
1

Discover Available Categories

Start by retrieving the available categories to present options to your users:
GET /api/v2/categories?search=restaurant&limit=20
This helps users find relevant categories by searching or browsing the complete catalog.
2

Get Category Suggestions

Once a user selects a primary category, get intelligent suggestions for additional categories:
GET /api/v2/categories/{primary_category_id}/suggested
These suggestions are based on the most commonly used additional categories by businesses with the same primary category.
3

Create or Update Business

Apply the selected categories to a business using either endpoint:For new businesses:
POST /api/v2/businesses
{
  "name": "My Pizza Place",
  "categories": [
    # The first category of the array is always the primary category
    "gcid:pizza_restaurant",
    # Additional categories
    "gcid:italian_restaurant",
    "gcid:pizza_delivery_service"
  ],
  // ... other business data
}
For existing businesses:
POST /api/v2/businesses/{business_id}
{
  "categories": [
    "gcid:pizza_restaurant",
    "gcid:italian_restaurant",
    "gcid:pizza_delivery_service",
    "gcid:pizza_takeout_service"
  ]
}
The first category in the array is treated as the primary category, which determines available attributes, services, menus, and place action links, and has the strongest impact on search rankings. Additional categories are treated as additional categories.
Use the suggestions endpoint to provide the same intelligent category recommendations in your application that users experience in the Partoo web interface.

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Frequently Asked Questions

No, we do not accept requests to add custom categories to our catalog. This is to ensure data quality and to prevent the use of invalid categories that could harm your business’s search performance.
We recommend 5-10 relevant categories. Your primary category is most important, followed by additional categories that accurately represent additional services or products you offer. Adding irrelevant categories can hurt your local SEO performance.
Google Business Profile’s category directory is comprehensive and should contain relevant options for any business type. Try searching for broader terms or synonyms if specific terms don’t yield results.
No, different publishers have varying category limits and systems. While Google accepts up to 10 categories, other platforms may only use your primary category or the first few categories from your list.
We continuously monitor for category changes from Google Business Profile. Here’s what happens when Google removes a category:Immediate Impact:
  • The category is automatically marked as obsolete in our system
  • Updates to your Google Business Profile listing may temporarily fail
Our Response:
  • Our team actively works to identify the most appropriate alternative category
  • We assign the replacement category to restore full functionality as quickly as possible
  • The obsolete category is replaced with the new one for all affected businesses still using the old, obsolete category
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The obsoletion of categories is caused by changes outside of our control, as we strive to always maintain accurate and effective category mappings.
Need help with category selection or experiencing issues? Contact our support team for personalized assistance with optimizing your business categories.