Business Information
Business categories
Primary and additional categories on Google and Facebook, why the primary one matters most, and how to choose it.
Last updated September 2, 2026
Your categories tell the platforms what kind of business you are, which is how they decide what searches to show you in. Google and Facebook each take a primary category and a set of additional ones.
The primary category does most of the work
It carries far more weight than the extras. Pick the one that describes what you mostly do — the thing that brings in the most revenue — rather than the widest one you could justify.
A VAGUE PRIMARY CATEGORY COSTS YOU SEARCHES
A sign maker categorised simply as "printer" competes for the wrong searches and loses the right ones. Specific beats broad — the platforms already know the related terms.
Additional categories
- Add the other things you genuinely do, not everything you could conceivably do.
- Three or four is usually plenty.
- Every category should be something a customer could turn up and buy today.
Across a network
Locations of the same brand should generally share a primary category, so the network is consistent in search — but a tribe with a genuinely different speciality should say so in its additional categories.