Since end 2018 I have been monitoring the changes made to the categories available to local guides for indicating what exactly a business (or other POI) on Google Maps has as its main activity. As the world around us in perpetually changing, categories have been added, removed and renamed.
But that has definitely not been a focus activity of the Maps team in 2025. Over the years, I have typically been able to come up with a new list of categories every quarter or so. (An overview of those reports can be found here.) But not in 2025. I made one post back in April, and then kept checking at regular times if new ones had been added… but never noticed a list long enough to justify an quarterly post.
And now we’re already 2026! All in all only 13 new categories have been added in 2025. In the April post I already mentioned Queer bar and K-12 school, and since then only 11 new ones have been added:
- Bartending service
- Bilingual preschool
- Consolidated rental car center
- Donburi restaurant
- Eastern Catholic church
- Esthetics service
- Insurance agent
- Nursing practice
- Probate attorney
- Public water well
- RV repair and maintenance service
- Vauxhall dealer
Compared to previous years, this is really not a lot:
| Year | # New categories |
|---|---|
| 2024 | 45 |
| 2023 | 56 |
| 2022 | 32 |
| 2021 | 86 |
| 2020 | 35 |
| 2019 | 51 |
As I already mentioned in April, a lot of categories had been removed early 2025, so we could consider 2025 as a kind of clean-up year - which is a good thing of course (#LGCTM 
), because only adding new stuff can make things messy after a while. And perhaps the big removal operation inspired the team to be more cautious in adding new categories.
Talking about removals: one additional one has been removed: Swimming basin. Some other, sports-related ones have been slightly renamed. Car racing track became Car racing venue, and similarly there is now BMX venue and Off-road racing venue. At those places, there is usually indeed more going one than only the track as such. Skateboard park was renamed to Skatepark , no doubt as other equipment as skateboards are used there for skating. And finally Hockey rink is now renamed to Ice hockey rink - as there is of course also outdoor hockey.
Most of the newly added categories are pretty self-explanatory. There’s only one that I am totally unfamiliar with (undoubtedly partly because I am a notorious non-foodie 
)… Donburi restaurant. Usually I google the names of the categories I don’t know before writing these posts (and then pretend to have known them for years), but this time I decided it is more fun to have other LG community members explain it to me. So, if you know what a Donburi restaurant is, please let me know in the comments (and perhaps add a good reason why I should visit one soon).
, this is really cool! It’s always nice to see when someone focuses on something and becomes a master at it, like you 
.