Google: Don't Spam Maps Categories, Rather Get Customer Reviews

Dec 17, 2010 - 8:35 am 4 by
Filed Under Google Maps

A Google Places Help thread has a Google Maps Product Manager, Jeremy Sussman, responding to how to help improve your Google Maps rankings.

He offered specific advice to one Google Places holder telling him not to take advice of someone in the thread telling him to add himself to more categories. You can, but only if it is relevant to the business. Let me quote Jeremy.

Actually, having a bunch of categories is *not* what you should do. Categories are meant to be a description of what your business is, not a place for you to stuff keywords for which you want good search results. This is spamming our algorithm, and even if it works temporarily, over time our algorithms will get smarter.

Fraser's, what you want to do is concentrate on generating information about you on the web. Encourage your customers to write reviews about your business. Basically, our goal is to know how well perceived your business is, and therefore to give our users a realistic view of the world.

Jeremy also posted a how local search ranking works video, which I will embed here.

Do you think you should add your business to more categories and not listen to Google's advice?

Forum discussion at Google Places Help.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: July 18, 2025

Jul 18, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google June Core Update Done, Local Ranking Update, AI Mode Updates & AI Calling Businesses

Jul 18, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Maps

New Google Business Profile Check Edit Status

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google: Login Service Pages Are Hard To Rank In Search

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Rolling Out Smart Bidding Exploration To Some Advertisers

Jul 18, 2025 - 7:21 am
Previous Story: The Web Mourns The Expected Loss Of AltaVista & Delicious