Earlier today, the brand new version of this Connect forum was launched - it’s been hard to miss that 
The past few months most of my Local Guides-related time spending has had to do with the preparation for this huge migration (the platform does not only look completely different, the technology in the background is also another one, making the entire operation a mammoth effort - respect to the team for pulling that off!), so other aspects of what I usually do round here have been sort of… neglected. Like keeping an eye on what happens with the list of categories available to local guides to classify the so-called points of interest (POI), places and businesses shown on Maps.
And indeed, it turns out the team in charge of categories has also been quite busy. Since the last time I posted newly added categories (there’s also an overview of all those posts if you want to learn more) 15 new categories have been added, and 24 have been removed.
The new categories are mainly related to healthcare and mobility - adding once more great opportunities to change POIs to a more approriate category (and score those 5 points for each of them on your path to level 10 
). Here’s the full list (a great test of this new “table” feature in the designer on the new Connect):
| New categories |
|---|
| Data center |
| IV therapy service |
| Physical rehabilitation center |
| Psychosocial therapist |
| Rental car return location |
| Wire and cable supplier |
| Auto care products store |
| Church council office |
| Head and neck surgeon |
| Personal concierge service |
| POS terminal supplier |
| Public utility company |
| Store fixture supplier |
| Test preparation center |
| Tire service |
As I mentioned the list of categories is not only changed by adding new ones; the phenomenon we saw in the past few months is also continued: a kind of clean up operation to remove outdated or ambiguous entries.
A funny one to remove is Newspaper advertising department. Is Google admitting implicitly that their domination of the ads market (together with Facebook) is indeed putting newspapers out of business? 
Anyway, you can check the complete list here:
| Removed categories |
|---|
| Biotechnology engineer |
| Bookmaker |
| Building design company |
| Bus and coach company |
| Coat wholesaler |
| Commercial cleaning service |
| Commercial refrigeration |
| Corporate entertainment service |
| Cosmetic and perfumes supplier |
| Couture store |
| Electrical equipment manufacturer |
| Electronics exporter |
| Evening dress rental service |
| Industrial door supplier |
| Industrial framework supplier |
| Interior door shop |
| Newspaper advertising department |
| Office of a fair trade organization |
| Prefabricated house companies |
| Sheepskin coat store |
| Steel drum supplier |
| Stove builder |
| T-shirt company |
| Tuning automobile |
Are any of the newly added categories super helpful to you? Will you miss any on the removed ones? Do let me know in the comments!
