Business categories
GBP categories · Primary category
The classification assigned to a Google Business Profile, with one primary and up to nine secondary categories, strongly determining which searches it can appear for.
Glossary category
Local
Search tied to a physical place: business profiles, proximity, citations and the local pack.
15 terms
Business Profile suspension
GBP suspension
Google disabling a business listing for policy violations such as a fake address, keyword-stuffed name, ineligible business type or prohibited category.
Google Business Profile
GBP · Google My Business
The free business listing that powers a company's presence in Google Maps, the local pack and business panels, renamed from Google My Business in 2021.
Local citations
Business listings
Mentions of a business's name, address and phone on third-party sites such as directories, industry bodies, chambers of commerce and data aggregators.
Local grid rank tracking
Geo-grid tracking · Local Falcon-style grids
Measuring local pack rankings from many simulated points across a map to reveal how visibility varies by searcher location.
Local landing pages
Location pages
Pages on a business's own site dedicated to a specific location or service area, supporting both localised organic rankings and the business profile.
Local SEO
Local search optimisation
Optimising a business's visibility for geographically constrained searches, across both the map pack and localised organic results.
LocalBusiness structured data
LocalBusiness schema
Schema.org markup describing a physical business — address, geo coordinates, opening hours, phone, price range — placed on the relevant location page.
Multi-location SEO
Multi-site local
Managing local search presence across many branches, franchises or practitioners, at a scale where consistency and governance become the main challenge.
NAP consistency
Name, Address, Phone
Keeping a business's name, address and phone number identical across its website, business profile and third-party directories.
Near me search
Implicit local intent
Queries with local intent, whether stated explicitly with 'near me' or inferred from the query and the searcher's location.
Proximity
Distance · Searcher location
The physical distance between the searcher and a business, one of the three factors Google names for local ranking and often the most decisive.
Reviews and review velocity
Review velocity · Google reviews
Customer ratings and written reviews on a business profile, along with the rate at which new ones arrive, contributing to local prominence and conversion.
Service area business
SAB
A business that serves customers at their location rather than at its own premises, and which hides its address on its Google Business Profile.
Store locator SEO
Branch finder
Making a multi-location store finder crawlable, so every branch page is discoverable through real links rather than only through a JavaScript map interface.