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How to See What Categories a Google Places Listing is Using

Previously I was always utilizing MapMaker to find the list of categories that a Google Places/Google Plus Local page was targeting. However there is a faster way:

  • Right click on the listing
  • Click View Page Source
  • Press CTRL + F and search for “GCID”
  • The categories the page is targeting will all be listed together

 

Examplehttps://plus.google.com/118129846418670933134/posts

Pulls up:

gcid:canadian_restaurant

gcid:restaurant

gcid:fine_dining_restaurant

gcid:bar

Google Places Categories

*Joy’s Notes: This approach doesn’t catch custom categories which still sometimes exist in MapMaker & only works on verified listings (thanks to the comments on this article, in addition to discussion on the local Google community forum).

Joy Hawkins

Joy is the owner of the Local Search Forum, LocalU, and Sterling Sky, a Local SEO agency in Canada & the USA. She has been working in the industry since 2006, writes for publications such as Search Engine Land, and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as MozCon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove, and State of Search. You can find her on Twitter or volunteering as a Product Expert on the Google My Business Forum.

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Thx for sharing!
    On unclaimed listings search for “data-payload” or “data-displaytext”.
    But actually it’s a search on unclaimed listings not necessary, or have unclaimed listings more then one categories in it?

  2. Great tip, Joy. Sometimes there is an easier way though. If the categories appearing next to the i icon are not hotlinked, you can click on the black text and the list of categories will appear. However, if the category is hotlinked, this doesn’t work and your tip is perfect. Why are some hotlinked and others not? If there are just 1 or 2 categories, they will be hotlinked. The exception to that rule is that Google doesn’t appear to be counting the top level categories. For example, if an attorney has 3 categories: Attorney, Personal Injury Attorney and Immigration Attorney as categories, the last two will show as hotlinks. If you add Business Attorney into the mix, there will be no hotlinks.

    1. Yes! I have discovered that G+ is now useless for getting any information about the business listing 🙂 Use MapMaker!

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