What is the right Google Business Profile category, when do additional categories help, and does a complete profile actually matter? Local SEO teams have discussed these questions for years, often with more intuition than evidence. A new study published by Search Engine Land on August 25 puts a much larger lens on the topic: 1.8 million Business Profiles across 4,209 categories, analysed by Whitespark.
The findings should not be read as “complete one field and guarantee a ranking.” The study's author explicitly says that the relationships between categories, profile completeness, and rank do not prove causation. Its category set and market conditions will not map perfectly to every business in Türkiye either. Still, two findings are useful operating signals for local visibility: make the primary category describe the business clearly, and keep profile information accurate, current, and complete.
What changed in the research?
This is not a Google algorithm announcement or a new Business Profile feature. Darren Shaw, founder of local SEO platform Whitespark, analysed category and basic-profile data from 1.8 million profiles. The work asks how particular primary and additional category combinations move with local rankings, and what profile completeness appears to reveal.
The clearest statistic compares generic and specific primary categories. In the study's classification, profiles with a specific primary category appeared in the top 10 at a 12.5% rate, compared with 9.2% for generic categories. That is an approximate 36% relative difference. It does not mean that choosing a precise category, by itself, creates 36% better rankings. Businesses that maintain a better category may also be stronger at reviews, websites, photos, citations, and other local operations.
The direction nevertheless matches Google's own guidance. Google says that a primary category should be the best and, where possible, most specific description of the business. Additional categories should describe services the business genuinely offers. A category is not a free-text keyword field. A restaurant should not turn every menu item into a category, and a clinic should not add nearby services merely because their search volume is appealing.
Why can a specific category matter?
Local-search intent is often contained in the category itself. “Restaurant” and “vegan restaurant,” “plumber” and “emergency plumber,” or “hotel” and “boutique hotel” do not describe the same need. Google says it evaluates relevance, distance, and prominence together. A correct category is only one input to relevance; it does not erase physical distance, competitor strength, reviews, or a brand's wider online prominence.
The study's examples show better average positions associated with a specific primary category plus additional categories that genuinely complement it. “Genuinely” is the important word. A broad service menu is not a reason to automatically use nine additional categories. Each category should represent something the location really provides and a separate customer intent that the profile can support.
There is another boundary for teams operating in Türkiye: the category vocabulary. Google's available choices can vary by country and interface language. Do not copy a category label from a US data example straight into a Turkish account structure. First confirm what customers visit for, what role each location performs, and what the nearest accurate category set is in the profile itself. Giving every branch the same primary category only makes sense where the business model is actually the same.
What does profile completeness indicate?
The researcher scored completeness through five basic signals: a website, a description, business hours, photos, and verified ownership. Fully complete profiles had a reported average rank of 43, compared with 62 for profiles with none of those signals. Their top-10 rate rose from 4% to 13%. These are strong correlations, not a ranking formula.
Google's official guidance points in the same direction: complete and accurate information can help Google understand a business and match it to relevant searches. Google does not define hours, address, category, attributes, photos, or review replies as the single ranking variable. The system considers relevance, distance, and prominence together. “The profile is complete, the work is done” and “our website is enough even if the profile is empty” are both weak operating models.
For hotels, restaurants, retail locations, clinics, and service-area businesses, these details connect directly to customer experience. Incorrect holiday hours, an old phone number, a wrong map pin, or a closed location can lower conversion as well as visibility. Local contact information and LocalBusiness structured data on the website should not conflict with the information in the Profile. Google Search Central recommends accurate local-business details such as address and opening hours on relevant business pages.
What is certain, and where should teams be cautious?
The certain part is modest. The study sees an association between specific categories, sensible additional categories, basic profile completeness, and stronger local visibility in a very large sample. Google also recommends complete, accurate information, a specific primary category, and additional categories that describe the actual business.
The uncertainty matters more. This was not a controlled experiment, so adding a specific category or more photos does not promise a ranking jump. The study's examples do not represent the Turkish market one-to-one. A wrongly chosen category can reduce relevance, and a significant edit can require renewed verification. Changing name, address, category, website, and service area together also makes it impossible to know which variable moved the outcome.
Fark Studio perspective: treat this data as a call for local data governance, not a category trick. Local visibility gets stronger when the Profile, website, structured data, reviews, branch operations, and measurement all describe the same reality. The top-10 difference is interesting, but the practical task is to find incomplete or contradictory fields in your own estate, not to copy a percentage.
What should teams do now? A seven-step local-visibility audit
1. Write one primary customer intent for every location. The primary category should describe what the business is, not list every campaign message or product it sells.
2. Validate the primary category. Check the most specific and accurate choice Google offers in that market. Do not move to a generic category merely to chase broader reach.
3. Match additional categories to evidence. Each one should have a service page, in-store offering, booking flow, menu, or other concrete proof. Remove or defer categories without support.
4. Audit the five basics. Is verification current? Are the website, description, hours, and photos correct? Review special hours, seasonal closures, and relocation information in the same pass.
5. Connect the Profile and website. Branch name, address, telephone, hours, service area, and relevant LocalBusiness data should agree. This is a shared checkpoint for SEO and corporate web teams.
6. Make changes in small cells. For multi-location brands, compare equivalent branches where possible. Do not change all categories in the same week; record previous values, change dates, local rank, and demand.
7. Read the result through business metrics. Review map visibility, directions requests, calls, bookings, and store-visit intent together. A rank increase only matters if it supports the right customer and the operating model.
Act immediately on incorrect business information, contradictory branch data, or categories for services no longer offered. Wait before major category changes that could require verification or affect a wide service model during a busy season. First document search intent, the competitor set, and a rollback plan.
If you want to audit local visibility and conversion flow across multiple locations, hotels, restaurants, or service areas, Fark Studio can help build a local SEO working plan. The goal is not to fill a single Profile field, but to keep information consistent from the search result to a door, booking, or enquiry.
Sources
Search Engine Land, What 1.8 million Google Business Profiles tell us about local SEO success, August 25, 2026.
Google Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google, current documentation.
Google Business Profile Help, Manage your business category, current documentation.
Google Search Central, Local business structured data, current documentation.
