Category clean-up: more removed than added

[JanVanHaver]

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

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 😉?). 

Happy guiding!

[MicheleMarques]

I'm surprised that they are adding a new type of grocery store while consolidating types of hotels

[C_T]

Hi @JanVanHaver 

That's 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?

[JanVanHaver]

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 'inactive' or so, causing them to still appear on POIs that have them, but not be available for future use.

[ChiaraMariaC]

Thank you so much for sharing this information @JanVanHaver. 😀 👍🏻 

I think that's 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 can't get the accurate search results for Shanxi style restaurants on Google. 

But it's good to know that Google implemented new categories. 😀 

Many greetings from Hamburg, Germany 😊

[MortenCopenhagen]

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 can't select it anymore. Cheers.

[Amiran]

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?!!

[JanVanHaver]

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 

[MortenCopenhagen]

I'm 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.

Cheers

[JanVanHaver]

As it happens, @MortenCopenhagen , I had also already submitted an Idea about an inconsistency related to 'suppliers' 😄

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.