MapGap · guide

How to find a competitor’s Google Business Profile categories

A Google Business Profile has one primary category and can have additional categories. Only the primary one is shown on the public listing, so the additional ones take a little digging. This guide covers where each one shows up, the method local SEO guides describe for the rest, and its caveats.

1. The primary category: shown on the listing

1. Search the competitor’s business name on Google Maps and open their listing.
2. The category shown with the star rating, under the business name, is their primary category.
3. Copy it exactly as written, for example “Plumber” or “Nail salon”.

Whitespark’s Google Business Profile guide notes that the primary category is the only one published publicly. It also says a profile can have up to 9 additional categories.

2. Additional categories: not shown on the listing

Google doesn’t display additional categories on the listing. Local SEO guides (Whitespark, LocalClarity, Local Search Fuel) describe two ways to see them:

• Page source. On desktop, open the competitor’s listing directly on Google Maps, right-click the page and choose View Page Source, then use Find (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) to search for the primary category. The guides say that a few matches in (often the third), the primary category is followed by a list of the profile’s other categories in quotes. If you only find the primary, the listing may have just one category.
• Browser extensions. The same guides mention free Chrome extensions such as GMBspy and GMB Everywhere, which show a listing’s categories on Google Maps. MapGap isn’t affiliated with either of them.

Caveats before you act on what you find

• The page-source method isn’t an official Google feature. Google can change the Maps page at any time, so the steps may stop matching what you see.
• LocalClarity notes that the list in the source can include categories Google assigned itself, not only the ones the owner picked. Google’s own guidelines say it implicitly adds more general categories behind the scenes and can detect category information from a business’s website.
• Google’s guidelines also ask businesses to use as few categories as possible to describe the core business, to choose categories that complete “This business IS a”, and not to use categories only as keywords. A category being on a competitor’s profile doesn’t mean it fits yours.
• Google’s help page says that adding or editing a category may mean you’re asked to verify your business again.

3. Put what you found side by side

Once you have the categories, you can compare them in a spreadsheet or paste them into MapGap:

• Enter your own business and up to five competitors. Each has a Primary category field and an Additional categories box.
• The Additional categories box accepts commas or new lines. It also splits on semicolons, pipes, tabs and bullet characters, so a list copied from a spreadsheet or extension doesn’t need much cleanup.
• Copy-paste noise such as curly quotes, non-breaking spaces and leading “- ” or “1. ” list markers is cleaned up, and matching ignores capitalization. Different wording still counts as a different category (“Plumber” and “Plumbing service” don’t match).
• MapGap lists the categories competitors use that you don’t, ranked by how many competitors use each one, and tags any that is a competitor’s primary category.

MapGap doesn’t look anything up on Google. It only compares what you paste in, and it doesn’t edit your profile. The free preview shows how many categories you’re missing and the top 2 in full. The full list and CSV are $9.99 one-time on Whop.

Sources

• Google Business Profile Help, “Manage your business category”: support.google.com/business/answer/7249669
• Google Business Profile Help, “Guidelines for representing your business on Google” (Categories section): support.google.com/business/answer/3038177
• Whitespark, “The Definitive Guide to Google Business Profile Optimization”, Business information section
• LocalClarity, “Selecting the Right Google Business Profile Categories”
• Local Search Fuel, “Finding Competitor Google Business Profile Categories”