In this post, I am going to cover Categories and Tags in a more in-depth manner and I hope that it can provide further guidance to the community who are still struggling with them. I am still seeing questions and comments about them and coming across numerous posts that are incorrectly categorised and/or tagged.
Disclaimer: These are my personal opinions and as much as I wish them to be absolutely correct, they may not be. They are certainly not definitive so just use them as guidance!
Before we start, please have a read through the following posts:
- What are Connect categories? by @DeniGu
- What are Connect tags and how to use them? by @DeniGu
- What are topics, categories, and tags? by @MortenCopenhagen
Those posts should be enough to explain what Categories & Tags are and how to use them. I know, it’s a lot to read and you’re excited to just write a post and share your experiences! But if you are still confused after reading those posts, then read on and let me help you understand categories and tags better.
Let’s start with an overview. The old Connect has 7 main categories that you can write posts for:
- Photography
- Travel
- Food & Drinks
- Local Stories
- Meet-ups
- How-tos
- Achievements
The new Connect has 4 main categories:
- Connections & celebrations
- Google Maps contribution stories
- Google Maps tips & tricks
- Meet-ups
However, when creating a new topic, you can only choose 1 category from the first three categories. The Meet-ups category now has a separate process and you can only write a recap post for a meet-up only if you have attended it.
Click here if you want to know more about writing recaps for Meet-ups
In the new Connect, only meet-up organisers and attendees can submit a meet-up post.
When you are browsing the Meet-ups category, you will see a feed of upcoming meet-ups that are presented in, what I would call, a card-like format. So, let’s call them the meet-up cards. When you tap on any of them, you can get more information about the meet-up and choose to attend or not.
Note: Before choosing to attend a meet-up please do check what type of meet-up it is:
- In-person: these meet-ups are at a specific physical location and you’ll need to be in the same area to attend.
- Virtual: these are usually done over the internet using a video-conferencing service like Google Meet.
- Hybrid: these are mostly in-person but with some time allocated to a virtual call too.
If you are the organiser of the meet-up, at the end of the meet-up you should immediately go back to the meet-up card and look for a Create a recap button. Tap on it and write a brief note e.g. “This is a placeholder for the recap of this meet-up. Please check back soon for the actual recap post”. And post the “recap”.
The Create a recap button will then be replaced with View recap button on the meet-up card. Be aware that the Create a recap button also appears for attendees. So, as an organiser, if you want your recap to be the primary recap, you will need to quickly “reserve your spot” by submitting your “recap” first.
Find time to draft out an actual recap post and when you’re ready, edit the “recap” and replace the text above (“This is a placeholder…”) with your actual recap! Voila! Done!
If you are an attendee, please wait for the organiser to submit their recap post first before sharing your recap. And, most importantly, your recap should be shared as a reply to the recap post! This is the big change and the current direction is for all recaps from the same meet-up to be grouped together under the primary recap post.
If you decide to post your recap under one of the other 3 categories, the moderators are obliged to move them to the primary recap post. Hence, you should never write a recap using any of the 3 categories.
Recap posts also have the Meet-up recap tag applied automatically so that they can be filtered into a recap feed.
For more info, you can also check this official post by @Denigu.
As you can see, going from the old Connect to the new Connect, the different categories may look confusing and you may think that we have less categories now. Well, we do and we don’t! And that’s because the Local Guides team have introduced tags and there are 25 of them!
In alphabetical order:
AccessibilityAttractionBest practicesConnect forumCultureFood & drinksGalleryGratitude postHow-tosIn the newsIntroduce YourselfLeaderboardLet’s celebrateListsLocal businessMap editingMuseumNaturePhotographyPoints, levels & badgesReviewsRoad editingStreet artStreet View
Videography
I would actually associate the categories in the old Connect with the tags in the new Connect (so, we’re going from 7 possible categories in the old Connect to 25 possible tags in the new Connect) and to explain why I’m doing that association, let’s get on to the next part which is how to choose the correct category and tag for your post. This is where I have two methods for you to try.
Method 1
This is my recommended method as I think it’s the most straightforward and easiest to follow. This method requires focussing on the tags first and then categories second. For easy reference, look at the table below:
| Tags | Category |
|---|---|
| Let’s celebrate Introduce yourself Gratitude post In the news Leaderboard |
Connections & celebrations |
| Food & drinks Nature Attraction Culture Local business Gallery Museum Street art Accessibility |
Google Maps contribution stories |
| How-tos Street View Connect forum Photography Map editing Reviews In the news Best practices Road editing Points, levels & badges Videography Lists |
Google Maps tips & tricks |
Let’s begin:
- Think about the topic that you are writing about. From the list of tags above, pick just one tag that best describes your topic. Let’s call this the primary tag.
- Now that you’ve chosen your primary tag, you should also now have the matching category!
- (Optional) From this matching category, are there any other tag(s) that you think also match the theme of your topic? If yes, go ahead and select those tag(s) as your secondary tags.
- Congrats! You now have your category and tag(s) selected.
Click here to see examples
Example 1:
The topic is about sharing my experience visiting a very famous cafe in my city. It is famous for its local pastries and there are always long queues filled with tourists. Besides the pastries, they also serve a variety of coffee and tea, it has good accessibility features and the service was amazing.
- Primary tag = Local business
- Secondary tag(s) = Accessibility, Food & drink, Attraction
- Category = Google Maps contribution stories
Example 2:
The topic is about celebrating World Cat Day. I want to talk about what this celebration is about, why it’s exciting and how we, as Local Guides, can contribute to it such as reviewing cateries, pet shops, cat cafes. Also, share what makes a good review when reviewing such places.
- Primary tag = Let’s celebrate
- Secondary tag(s) = none
- Category = Connections & celebrations
Example 3:
The topic is about the TRAC (Thousand Roads Added Challenge) project. I want to explain what the project is about, how to participate in this challenge and what you need to do to ensure that your contributions are correct and accurate.
- Primary tag = Road editing
- Secondary tag(s) = How-tos, Best practices
- Category = Google Maps tips & tricks
Method 2
For this method, I will be sharing my mapping of the old Connect to the new Connect. Certain categories/tags are repeated because it all depends on the subject of what you’re writing and also how you are framing your story.
Originally, I was not keen on sharing my mapping because it’s far better for the community to forget the “old ways” but if you’re adamant on referencing the old Connect, hopefully this mapping table will help.
| Old Connect | New Connect | |
|---|---|---|
| Categories | Categories | Tags |
| Photography | Google Maps tips & tricks | Photography |
| Travel | Google Maps contribution stories | Food & drinks Nature Attraction Culture Museum Accessibility Local business Gallery Street art |
| Food & Drink | Google Maps contribution stories | Food & drinks |
| Local Stories | Google Maps contribution stories | Nature Attraction Culture Museum Accessibility Local business Gallery Street art |
| Local Stories | Connections & celebrations | Introduce Yourself In the news |
| Meet-ups | Meet-ups | Food & drinks Map editing Photography Accessibility Local business Road editing Videography |
| How-tos | Google Maps tips & tricks | How-tos Street View Connect forum Map editing Photography Best practices Lists Reviews Road editing Videography In the news Points, levels & badges |
| Achievements | Connections & celebrations | Let’s celebrate Gratitude post Leaderboard In the news |
For example, if a topic that you’re thinking of writing used to fall under the Local Stories category, now it should fall under the Google Maps contribution stories category, and you’ll need to pick the best matching tag(s) under that category.
I hope the above two methods are easy to follow and understand. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section below.
Next, I wanted to provide some comments to the type of posts that would fall under the different categories/tags because it isn’t always very clear even to us moderators!
Connections & celebrations
| Tag | Comments |
|---|---|
| Let’s celebrate |  sharing your Google Maps contribution stats reaching the next level getting a new badge on Google Maps or Connect reaching a new milestone celebrating events made popular by social media e.g. National Bagel Day, Celebrate Diversity Month, National Cat Day. These modern day celebrations are casual in nature, not culturally specific and are usually not location specific. |
| Introduce yourself | introducing yourself on Connect |
| Gratitude post | showing appreciation for or thanking another Local Guide |
| In the news | sharing information that you’ve been featured in social media, magazines, newspapers, TV shows, radio shows etc |
| Leaderboard | anything related to leaderboard or ranking |
Google Maps contribution stories
| Tag | Comments |
|---|---|
| Food & drinks | sharing information about a dish or a drink |
| Nature | sharing information about nature type venues e.g. parks, beaches, mountains, lakes etc |
| Attraction | sharing information about local attractions; if the place you are writing about does not fall under the other tags, then you can probably use this tag |
| Culture | sharing culturally related information e.g. Indian culture, Western culture, Chinese culture etc celebrating cultural events that are usually local to a specific area/region and celebrated by a specific group of people e.g. Chinese New Year, Diwali, Ramadan bazaars, Christmas markets etc |
| Local business | sharing information about a brick & mortar business i.e. a business that has a physical presence like a building |
| Gallery | sharing information about a gallery |
| Museum | sharing information about a museum |
| Street art | sharing information about street art |
| Accessibility | sharing information that is related to accessibility e.g. highlighting accessible features, discussing ways to promote accessibility etc |
Google Maps tips & tricks
| Tag | Comments |
|---|---|
| How-tos | sharing information on how to do something asking questions or requesting help on how to do something |
| Street View | sharing information related to Street View |
| Connect forum | sharing information related to the Connect forum |
| Photography | sharing information related to photography |
| Map editing | sharing information related to map editing |
| Reviews | sharing information related to reviews |
| In the news | sharing news related to Google Maps or the Local Guides program e.g. news from Google Keyword blog |
| Best practices | use this when you’re sharing best practices |
| Road editing | sharing information related to road editing |
| Points, levels & badges | sharing information on how to earn points, levels or badges properly. This is not a celebratory post as it falls under tips & tricks! |
| Videography | sharing information related to videography |
| Lists | sharing information related to lists |
The majority of the tags should be self-explanatory but there are some nuances that you will need to pay attention to:
-
the In the news tag under Connections & celebrations is used when a Local Guide is featured in the news. When that tag is used under Google Maps tips & tricks it is when Google Maps or the Local Guides program are featured in the news.
-
traditional celebrations tend to be culturally specific and should come under the Culture tag. Modern day celebrations tend to be newer celebrations that are global in nature and are usually made popular by social media. These events should come under the Let’s celebrate tag.
-
I think the Attraction tag is a catch all tag. Attraction is a very generic terminology that covers all sorts of locations e.g. a popular beach can be tagged with both Nature and Attraction tags. So, for me, if your subject does not fall under Nature, Local business, Gallery, Museum or Street art, then it will most likely need the Attraction tag.
-
How-tos tag is usually about sharing how to do something or asking the community for assistance in doing something. You would normally pair this with other tags. For example, your post could be about how to use Google Maps to make lists and you should use the How-tos and Lists tags.
-
likewise, you would normally use the Best practices tag with other tags too.
Anyway, I think I’ve covered Categories & Tags deep enough and I hope that the explanations provided (based on my own personal understanding) are sufficiently clear. This post is super long but I do hope that you’ve spent the time to read it and digest it. Feel free to use the information above to help others who are struggling to choose the right category and tag(s) for their posts. Due to the length of the post, it might be easier to focus on specific areas when explaining things. 
