Unable to select category "Medical College & Hospital", Please suggest

[DrShaunak]

Hi,

Here in India almost all (Both Government & private) renowned medical colleges have their own teaching institute (medical college) in same campus. So the name of the particular college is XYZ Medical College & Hospital (where XYZ belongs to name) and that particular name is very familiar with us. 

So when it comes to category selection in map maker I select Hospital under category and then in sub category I select Medical college. 

But when I add/edit a medical college from mobile I can not find sub category option. 

Here the problem starts. I found someone has changed a Hospital category to Medical college. Now both are collect. In that case hospital listings is missing from the map, which is disturbing. 

@iyudhi Did you face similar problems? What is the solution? 

So please suggest me what to do. @TraciC

Thanks,

[Flash]

Hello,

You are not missing any steps, but rather editing in Maps only edits the primary category.  The extra editing features within Map Maker are being graduated into Maps; at some time in the future hopefully we will be able to edit the additional categories of a POI.

[DrShaunak]

@TraciC In case you have missed this post I tagged you again. Please help me or you may pass this to your team for adding a new category in maps  i.e. 'Medical College & Hospital" category.  Thank you. 

[Flash]

Dr Shaunak, this is not an on demand service where you state whom must answer you and what they must do.

The categories on Maps are very mature.  There are already categories existing to deal with this situation.  The only issue is that you cannot add a secondary category via Maps yet.  You will need to be patient and wait for that functionality to be added.  Inappropriate categories that combine two categories into one are not going to be created to fill the gap.

[DrShaunak]

@Flash I am not talking about on demand service. If you read my earlier post carefully you know what problem I am facing. Again I am quoting my problem in one sentence "I found someone has changed a Hospital category to Medical college. Now both are collect. In that case hospital listings is missing from the map,"

I posted this topic on weekend so chances of overlooking is there. Even I do not know its solution so I tagged one of Google moderators for a solution as per this post where it clearly mentioned in bold sometimes you’ll find yourselves in need of someone from Google

You said Inappropriate categories that combine two categories into one are not going to be created to fill the gap. It seems you are very confident on this. In that case I would request Googlers (as we can not have the move option) to move my post to Feedback and Feature request

Thanks

[Flash]

You are speaking of an on demand service when you expect particular people to respond, or even when you expect Google to respond.  Google normally interjects into the forums only when the community is not able to provide the answer.  Many of us have been mapping for years and some of us have direct contact with Google; most questions already have known answers.

It would not make sense to make a feature request for a stop gap of adding inappropriate categories.  The logical thing to do instead is to eventually add the ability to edit all the categories.  Google is already working on graduating all the features in Map Maker that then can into Maps, though it will take some time.  There are many things that cannot be done until that happens; the only solution is to wait until they are added.

[GusMoreira · Accepted solution]

Hello @DrShaunak, 

As you rightly pointed, today you can only add/edit multiple categories in Google Map Maker and not Google Maps.  Categories on Maps are very fluid and our system can identify different categories based on a user query like Hospitals and "Clinics" or "Emergency Services"...

Since Medical College and Hospital can be quite different in the real world Google Maps don't make the association (that's why you don't see the POI when you search for Hospitals) but this is actually a good use case to create a new category. We will definitely bring your feedback to the team.

For now, you can create 2 POIs on the map, one for the Medical College and another one for the Hospital if you want.

[Flash]

Thanks for the post, @GusMoreira, as you touch on something I had already thought of during the day and thus why I've returned here.

@DrShaunak, are all of these truly one location that needs two categories?  That is to say, is the medical college and the hospital a single entity with a single operations office, a single phone number, etc.?

Or is one a department of the other?

As an example, my university (UBC or University of British Columbia) has a medical school at it, the UBC Faculty of Medicine.  Across a narrow lane is the UBC Hospital.  The two are obviously highly related, but the administration of the Faculty of Medicine and the administration of the hospital are performed by two separate sets of staff in two separate offices with two different phone numbers.  Because of this, they are both considered separate departments of UBC and get their own marker on the map as per the rules for departments.  In fact, the hospital is large enough that it then has further departments, such as the Medical Imagery department, the Emergency Room, Cardiology, Student Health (a clinic for UBC students), etc.

While Gus has said that for now they would allow you to create two POIs to make both categories searchable, I am wondering if a lot of the places you are thinking about actually have always qualified for two POIs.  If they are quite small they may only have one combined office; but if they are separate departments of a large entity such as in my example or if one is a department of the other then you probably should have always been using two POIs.  The big test is if they each have their own telephone numbers.

[DrShaunak]

Thank you @GusMoreira for your valuable suggestion. I am sure this will help. 

[DrShaunak]

@Flash Thanks for your example. Here in Kolkata almost all medical hospital and colleges have different phone numbers because their departments (academic & medical) are separate. 

However the names are same. I can give you two examples. "Calcutta Medical College & Hospital" and "R G Kar Medical College & Hospital '. More info can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_College_and_Hospital,_Kolkata  & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._G._Kar_Medical_College_and_Hospital