There is category-improvement work to be done (and Suggest an Edit points to be earned)! A couple of times I have posted in the past about inconsistencies in the availability of categories for car dealers, as a lot of brands had their own category (e.g. Ford-dealer) but some popular brands were missing.
This has now been fixed! A week or 2 ago new categories were added already in English, but now they also seem to be available in other languages, at least on Android (I have tested in Dutch, so I guess it will also be the case in at least a number of other languages - on desktop I don’t see them yet, but that will no doubt follow soon).
The brands that now also have their own car dealer category:
Peugeot
Citroen
Skoda
Seat
Mini
Smart
So, all the car dealers in your area, you can now change from the more general Car dealer to a specific branded category.
Also in other domains new categories were added, most of them regional/dish specific restaurants (Javanese restaurant, Nasi Goreng restaurant), but also
Cool that Escape Room Centre is now available. I’ve got one near work I’ve never been able to add. I’ll add it on Monday now after I grab some fresh photos. Thanks @JanVanHaver
I have some specific requests for other new categories, and I plan to create posts for every single one @TorM , as they suggest to post idea per entry.
There might still be an issue with the new categories @PaulPavlinovich . I can select ‘Escape room’ with my interface (Android) in Dutch, and the edit is accepted, but it doesn’t ‘stick’. When I look up the place again later on in the desktop version in English the category is correctly set to Escape Room, but in Dutch it’s set back to Entertainment Center.
What to do about car dealers with more than one brand of cars? I know that the owner of a pin can assign multiple categories. But what should we as Local guides do? @JanVanHaver
What I do in those situations depends on a few factors. If there are separate POIs for the 2 brands, I adapt each of the 2 (often the case for Mercedes and Smart). If there is a 2nd brand, but clearly in a subordinate way, I change the POI to the ‘main’ brand (often with Renault dealers, that have a small Dacia section). If the 2 or more brands are equally important, I leave the general category car dealer (e.g. Citroen & Peugeot or Jaguar & Rover). That’s my interpretation @MortenCopenhagen .Some of these things are also mentioned in the new episode 10 of www.letsguidepodcast.com
Thanks a lot for sharing the informaiton about the available car dealer categories on Google Maps. Please keep in mind that some categories, when adding a missing place, may vary depending on the region where you are based.
Hi @KatyaL and @JanVanHaver , Talking about which categories are available in what countries I just found this service: https://pleper.com/index.php?do=tools&sdo=gmb_categories You can pull lists of all available categories in a country + language combination. Sweet - but also very nerdy. Dealing with almost 4000 categories in a spreadsheet can be challenging. Just wanted to share.
@KatyaL yes, I am aware of that and have noticed that it can have negative effects when used inappropriately: some categories are not available in the local languages, but do show up in the list of categories you can select from, in their original English form. Upon selecting those, however, the POI then shows up in the local language interface as having no category!
This particular topic, and lots of related ones were the theme of a recent episode of the LetsGuide Podcast.
And indeed @MortenCopenhagen that is the tool I rely on to figure out if there are new categories. A link to it was also included in the shownotes of that episode
