{"id":4738,"date":"2022-12-13T22:35:49","date_gmt":"2022-12-13T22:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpmudev.whitespark.ca\/category-confusion-a-thing-of-the-past\/"},"modified":"2024-10-28T16:03:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T22:03:20","slug":"category-confusion-a-thing-of-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/blog\/category-confusion-a-thing-of-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Category Confusion in Local SEO is Not a Problem Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back in 2019, I tested the theory that having unrelated additional categories in your listing impacts rankings. The results of my experiment showed that this was true: After adding some bizarre categories to my Whitespark listing, my rankings dropped <em>significantly<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, what was once true in 2019 doesn&#8217;t necessarily apply to 2022, so I decided to test this theory again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This time, the results were <em>way<\/em> different&#8230;<\/span><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gi02O6OL4gI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Video Transcript<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hey everybody!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back in January 2019, I had heard that if you have a weird category in your listing, it could cause your local rankings to drop, so I wanted to test it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I added some really bizarre categories to my Whitespark listing: gazebo builder, flamenco dance store, colorectal surgeon&#8230; And back then, it actually had an impact \u2013 look at what happened to my rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The 2019 Experiment<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I added some really bizarre categories to my Whitespark listing: gazebo builder, flamenco dance store, colorectal surgeon&#8230; And back then, it actually had an impact \u2013 look at what happened to my rankings.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/DyArF3TV4AACYxE.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When I added all the categories, my rankings totally plummeted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And when I removed all the categories, my rankings came right back up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This was very interesting. I tweeted about it and it became a thing in the industry. People realized that you have to be careful, and that if you&#8217;re going to add additional categories to your listing, they should be related to your business.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, something that existed in 2019 does not necessarily exist in 2022. Google is always updating their algorithms, so I decided to test this again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And I&#8217;ll give you the spoiler right now: IT\u2019S NO LONGER A THING.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The 2022 Experiment<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In my current test, I did not see anything negative.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On November 1st, 2021, I added all the following categories to my Shaw Electrical listing: neurosurgeon, horse stable, stud farm, plumber, bird shop, monastery&#8230; They&#8217;re totally unrelated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, if we look at my rankings in the Whitespark Local Rank Tracker, we do not see that same impact (typically, with Google, you&#8217;ll find that rankings are impacted on the same day or the next day, or maximum two days later). My rankings all stayed the same for these primary key phrases that I&#8217;m tracking \u2013 all electrician-related keywords.<\/span><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/unrelated-categories-added.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"\" height=\"\" \/>Want to track your rankings in the tool local search experts say they &#8220;can&#8217;t live without&#8221;? Check out the <a style=\"text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/local-rank-tracker\/\">Whitespark Local Rank Tracker.<\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So, with this Rank Tracker, we can see that adding these additional categories to my listing had no negative impact on my rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is great news! This means that you don&#8217;t have to worry about the concept of category confusion anymore. It may have been a thing back in 2019, but it&#8217;s not a thing anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Therefore, if you see some categories that your competitors are using, go ahead and put those on your listing, too; because when you add more additional categories to your listing, you cast a wider net, and you rank for more key phrases.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Breathe a sigh of relief. Category confusion is a thing of the past. You don&#8217;t have to worry about it anymore. \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2019, I tested the theory that having unrelated additional categories in your listing impacts rankings. The results of my experiment showed that this was true: After adding some bizarre categories to my Whitespark listing, my rankings dropped significantly. However, what was once true in 2019 doesn&#8217;t necessarily apply to 2022, so I decided [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"classification":[],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4741,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions\/4741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"classification","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whitespark.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/classification?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}