Late last month, Google announced that it was adding 1,000 new categories in the new Places dashboard for businesses. This is an effort to significantly expand the breadth of available categories internationally.
The announcement was made in the Google product forums, and on Friday, that announcement received an update from Google’s Jade Wang, who had some additional news to share:
Additionally, we’ve just launched support for regional dialects in business categories on both Places for Business and Google Maps! As an example, an English speaking business owner in India can now choose the commonly used term Petrol Pump as their business category instead of the term Gas Station, which is uncommon in India. This new feature improves localization of business categories for more than a dozen countries.
Unfortunately, Wang did not specify which countries are getting these new options, but if you’ve had to select on oddly-worded version of your own category, you might want to check back in with the dashboard, and see if they’ve added something more appropriate.
Image via Google