Google announced last week on the Asia Pacific blog that they are rolling out a feature in the Google Maps user interface to add on top of the business names, the business category or type of business it is.

So when you scan the Google Maps and businesses show up, you will be able to see if they are restaurants or barber shops or whatever.

Here is a GIF of it in action:

Google said “there are more than 1,000 types of businesses available and this feature will be available in 19 languages. These include Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Dutch, English, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.”

This is rolling out first in Japan.

Forum discussion at Local Search Forums.