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September 12, 2026 · Method

The one Google setting that decides which searches you can win

Your primary category tells Google which searches you are even eligible for. It takes a minute to check. Here is how, and what ours said.

What the setting does

A Google Business Profile has one primary category. It is not a label. It is the gate. Set it to computer support and you are not in the running for website designer, however good your site is. The secondary categories help around the edges. The primary one decides.

How to check yours, in about a minute

Open your profile at business.google.com and read the primary category. Ask the phrase a customer types, not the one you would use. If the two do not match, change it, then run that search on your phone, signed out, and see what comes back.

What ours said

Ours said computer support. We sell websites. We changed it in July. Then it stayed on our own list of likely problems until September, because nobody opened the profile again to look. Checking takes a minute. We did not, for weeks.

The habit that fixes it

Every cause we write down now carries a date. If the date is old it is a claim, not a fact, and somebody opens the live listing and looks.

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