Brian Barwig was the first to notice the difference, although looking back on some screenshots, it does appear in a few of them. However, because of the nature of the businesses, it isn’t always obvious it is pulled from GMB categories.
Here is a result that shows two different categories being displayed in the pack.
The category name doesn’t seem to make an explicit difference to how local pack results are chosen. For example, the above was for a search of “shoes Seattle” and the first result wasn’t even in the shoe store category, but rather in the running store category. So it doesn’t seem to make a huge impact on which results they display.
The category could definitely affect CTR though. If someone notes the first result says “running store”, they could skip over it if they are looking for shoes other than running ones.
Here is another example, from the expanded listing, which shows 3 different categories.
For example, here is a listing for Disney Stores.
This is one of the many changes we have seen as Google made significant changes to how local results appear in the regular search results, primarily with the 3-pack change from the 7-pack.
Jennifer Slegg
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