As you might known already from previous posts (like this one or this one, to name the most recent examples), one of my favorite activities is checking if there are new categories available that local guides can use when creating or updating POIs.
The current list of newly added categories brings good news for all mobile phone users (a.k.a. the world population minus 3 or 4) as one of the additions is Cell phone charging station. The full list of added categories is
Cell phone charging station
Nurse practitioner
Russian grocery store
Tiki bar
For the first time since doing this, however, I now noticed that the total number of available categories had not increased, but rather decreased: more existing categories have been removed than new ones added. Especially when it comes to hotels, there seems to be a big clean-up operation. And also some types of restaurants - which had quite a few additions in the last few rounds - seem to have gone (most of those sound Asian to me, so perhaps LGs with experience in that domain can share their view in the comments on whether this makes sense?). The full list of removed categories is
Beach resort
Boutique hotel
Budget hotel
Business hotel
Conference hotel
Dong Bei restaurant
Family hotel
Fitness class
Hua Hui Market Place
Huaiyang style restaurant
Hubei style restaurant
Indian Curry Restaurant
Japanese Inn With Hot Spring
Luxury hotel
Shanxi style restaurant
Spa resort
Xiang cuisine restaurant
Another first (well: first one I notice) is that it turns out a spelling error was made in the previous bunch of added categories, which has now been rectified (from Alfa Romero Dealer to Alfa Romeo Dealer - no Italian Car fans in the QA-department ?).
Thatās pretty useful information.
However, I have one curiosity about the deleted categories.
If any existing POI was assigned the deleted category, then that is change to what? Or, all these were unused?
In my experience, @C_T , POIs that have a category which is removed simply retain that category. I suspect that those categories are still in the list, but with status āinactiveā or so, causing them to still appear on POIs that have them, but not be available for future use.
Thank you so much for sharing this information @JanVanHaver .
I think thatās a pity that so many categories have been removed. The categories of POIs are important for a accurate displaying on Google Maps. I guess, if the Google Maps-users are searching for example an Shanxi style restaurant, they canāt get the accurate search results for Shanxi style restaurants on Google.
But itās good to know that Google implemented new categories.
Hi @JanVanHaver In my experience you are correct about old categories remain unchanged on a POI after a category is no longer on the list of available categories. But you canāt select it anymore. Cheers.
Thanks for the information like ever dear @JanVanHaver ,
I really wonder why Google removed such important categories. Even when Google announced that will merge some of Google Trip features into Google Maps why they removed some tourism categories?!!
Perhaps I should have a closer look at the hotel-related categories still left in the list to see if I can figure out some logic to this unexpected move, @Amiran
Iām wondering if I found a mistake in the list of US categories:
Containers supplier
Container supplier
Are they any different or just a mistake?
There are
Scooter rental service
Scooter repair shop
But no category where you can buy scooters.
BTW: Are scooters the new electric scooters for rent in many cities, the smaller motorbike with a solid fence in front of your legs (like a Vespa) or the electric scooters with no motor. Or all three of them?
I have been working on getting a better understanding of why the Danish categories are pretty strange and inconsistent. From that work I realize that the US-list of categories is strongly influenced by US culture and how the US society is organized. But also a very strange bias towards covering all types of restaurants, martial arts, sports, and lawyers. I think it makes it more difficult to find a suitable category in other languages than need be.
As it happens, @MortenCopenhagen , I had also already submitted an Idea about an inconsistency related to āsuppliersā
Good question about the scooters, I will also look into that topic, as indeed the term could refer to different things, and as individual mobility is definitely a hot topic these days.
@MortenCopenhagen some interesting finds about scooters; there is a category that can be used for shops sellings scooters, however it is not called scooter dealer, but motor scooter dealer. Googling that specific terms reveals that it is typically used for sellers of the Vespa-style scooters, so it would still be a bit awkward to use it for sellers of the new electric scooters (but those are in most cases rented, not purchased, so Iām not sure there will ever be a specific category for these).
While researching this topic,I also stumbled upon the category motor scooter repair shop, which co-exists with the scooter repair shop category you mentioned. Not sure in which cases it would be best to use one or the otherā¦
No @SaifIS we have no separate businesses that could get that category over here, as far as I know. The only thing I can think of is something like the product shown here that is then installed in a shop or at e.g. an airport, where customers/visitors can charge their phone. Which is of course very useful if we can put them on Maps as people in a low battery situation might be urgently looking for such a POI.
Hello @JanVanHaver another thing based on categories, it looks like some of them if they are not available on mobile they are available on desktop or PC. I once tried to add a location but could not find the exact matching category, I used any which is related to what I wanted, after that I went to desktop, searched and found the exact one, and then I edited the first action I did, to correct it.
Do you still remember which one that was @Raphael-Mahumane ? I have not noticed that yet - but then again, I very rarely do LG stuff on desktop (I am one of those people with their smartphone more or less permanently attached to their hand).
A possible explanation could also be the different search behavior we had on mobile devices, whereby you could only find a category by typing in the first letters (you could then only find e.g. primary school by typing primary, not but typing school). That made it quite hard to find categories on mobile. Fortunately that is fixed now.
In my experience, in my small country, is that the smaller electric (kick) scooters are sold by bike shops or tech stores. I know a few computer stores that sell electric scooters. I havenāt seen any store set up to specifically sell a range of different scooters and nothing else. Possibly that will be a thing of the future, although you may already have enough people buying them where you are to have a store just dedicated to these types of scooters, but atm I think they are mostly hired. If I was to purchase one, I would probably go to an electronics store, an e-bike store, or shop online.
Likewise, Iām a little hesitant of the āScooter rentalā category. As the electric scooters are independent units all with Bluetooth and GPS technology to allow rentals to start and stop all over. No need to return to a place to end or start your rental period. And there is no staff around. That means they actually should not be on Google Maps. Earlier I have made an effort to remove lots of fraudulent bike rental pins that were added as advertising for one of these App-based bike rental companies. The places were added deliberately knowing that there might not be any bikes available. So I managed to remove them - but it took some fighting since the company keept trying to re-add them Most of these App-based / sharing companies have their own dedicated map where units are shown in real-time. It could be amazing if these could be integrated into Google Maps in such a way that they would also show up on navigation. And imagine if reservations were also possible. Cheers.
@JanVanHaver Thanks for the link to the lime-integration story. That would be a huge improvement. I agree that we have nothing to do or contribute in that integration. But donāt you agree that LGs should try to removing static and pure marketing pins for bike hire programs? Have you come across them? The company that I saw spamming a lot is called Donkey Republic. Cheers.
Adding a POI purely for marketing, without anything actually being there if you go to the physical location is indeed a breach of the guidelines Google provides (and therefore is it justified for LGs to remove those, although that might be fighting windmills to a large extent).
Companies like that can make a GMB profile with a service area instead of a fixed location to be found in searches.
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