If your Google Business Profile is still filed under a generic category like "Restaurant" or "Plumber," you may be handing top rankings to a competitor who spent five extra minutes getting specific. A new study of 1.8 million Google Business Profiles just put hard numbers on something local SEOs have suspected for years: the exact words you choose on your profile, and how completely you fill it out, move your ranking more than most owners realize.
The Category Study's Real Numbers
The study, which analyzed listings across more than 4,200 categories, found that businesses with a specific primary category were about 36% more likely to land in the top 10 than businesses filed under a generic one. A restaurant listed as "Tapas Restaurant" appeared in the top 10 roughly 32% of the time, compared to just 10% for a plain "Restaurant" listing, and about 2% for the crowded "Pizza Restaurant" category. It also works below the primary category: a plumber who added "Drainage Service" as a secondary category ranked, on average, seven spots higher than one who didn't bother.
Why Completeness Compounds the Effect
The study also scored profiles on a simple 0 to 5 completeness scale: website listed, business description filled in, hours set, photos uploaded, and the listing claimed. Businesses at the top of that scale outranked businesses at the bottom by roughly 19 average positions, and were more than three times as likely to show up in the top 10.
None of the businesses that ranked best in this study did anything exotic: they simply gave Google more accurate, complete information than everyone else in their category.
Fixing Your Own Category and Completeness
Open your Google Business Profile and check your primary category. If a more specific option exists that still accurately describes your business, switch to it instead of the broad, generic default.
Add secondary categories for the specific services you actually offer, not a long list of unrelated ones. A plumber who does drain cleaning should have both categories listed; a plumber who doesn't shouldn't.
Fill in every field on your profile: website link, business description, accurate hours, and current photos. An empty field is a ranking factor working against you, not a neutral one.
Confirm your listing is actually claimed and verified under your business, not left in an unclaimed or auto-generated state.
Search your own primary category in your city and see which categories your top-ranking competitors are using; Google's category list changes over time, and a more precise option may exist now that didn't a year ago.
Category selection and profile completeness are two of the few local search factors a business owner can fully control, with no ad spend and no algorithm guesswork required. A 15-minute profile review this week could be the difference between page one and page two.
Further reading: Moved Your Business? Google Might Still Think You're at the Old Address
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