Recently MyAnimeList merged their yaoi and shounen-ai genres into one titled Boys Love and their yuri and shoujo-ai into one titled Girls Love. This has been so convenient because I usually search BL by rating and now I don't have to check two separate lists. Every BL series is now under one genre and the same for GL. Would we be able to do something similar here on Baka-Updates Manga?

I think it's cool to have the BL and GL tag/genre in it's self but at the same time I don't think they shouldve done it.

There are ppl who like to separate adult/Mature content (Yaoi/Yuri) from non adult/Mature content (aka Shounen-Ai & Shoujo-Ai)

So now that's it's all bundle up ppl might get confused if the series is adult content or not

And there also others who don't really like Yaoi (adult content) and rather just see or read Shounen-Ai

If baka updates does get one it be cool because then we can have a better separation since there are Yaoi series that aren't necessarily BL

Example:
Killing Stalking is indeed and should be tag as Yaoi as it has M/M action but its definitely not BL (a boys love story)

I do wish things were more consistently marked as "Smut" on all websites, including MyAnimeList. Because even some Yaoi doesn't have that tag. I think the only place it's pretty consistent is Anime-Planet.

A agree with lovelyspacepanda, it be real nice and covenant, to have BL & GL as genres

But merging them all together isn't really all so convenant

I like lovelyspacepanda's explanation, with a few additions from me. I know everyone wants to combine the two especially the Japanese are indeed no longer using the Yaoi term (I read somewhere...was it here? I forgot). But I don't think it's really necessary to follow this either because we're all used to the old fashioned term. With Yaoi-Shounen Ai and Yuri-Shoujo Ai, it's easy to differentiate the content. If you ask me there's an option for "well, I know not all BLs are about sexual intercourse, so just put smut that whenever it's needed". Tbh, every tags we all know represent some level into it and we can understand it.

Note: But it's up to people if they want to call it BL or GL, the closest example tho, I like how SevenSeas publisher uses terms that are close to us, the community. We know at glance.

I prefer the way it is now. Though I search for both Yaoi and Shounen-Ai, actually I prefer Shounen-Ai. Not every Yaoi is Smut just like not every Shounen-Ai is Yaoi. When I search for Yaoi, I already know that smut scenes will await me (even if they're not smutty enough for the Smut-tag) while I'm on the safe side when looking for Shounen-Ai.
If everything were put together under the term BL, in my opinion an additional feature would be needed. Like giving the users the option to vote how much sexual content the manga has. E.g. nothing, just a little, average and a lot. Only then I wouldn't mind to combine Yaoi and Shounen-Ai to BL, because there would be another way to know about the sexual content beforehand.

Would be overkill to keep the Yaoi / Shounen-ai and Yuri / Shoujo-Ai separate genres, but then also add additional genres BL and GL that combine them? So everyone is happy? lol, maybe I'm just too greedy, I just want to view all the top rated BL in one list haha

What do you mean by viewing all top rated BL in one list? Maybe that's already possible and you can do it with Advanced Search. If you mean you want to see all the Yaoi/Shounen-ai without clicking on the genre tags in the manga page every time, you can go on Advanced Search and select both tags and then sort by Rating.
https://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?perpage=50&genre=Shounen+Ai_Yaoi&orderby=rating

Using advanced search like this should only show you manga that have both the yaoi and shounen ai genres, but excludes the ones that have only one of them, right? Though for that I think it would be more helpful to have an option to list all mangas to have one of the selected genres since that would help in other cases as well.

Some issues I have with BL-manga that likely als go for GL-manga:

Shounen Ai, especially older ones, may not even include BL. You have guys that are nice towards each other, they support each other, there might be even "funny" scenes where they accidentally kiss or similiar things. It's sad that this is far from the usual way people treat each other (excluding the accidentally kisses ofc), but I wouldn't consider that BL, it's just about friendship with a bit of comedy. Komatta Toki ni wa Hoshi ni Kike! is a good example, and people that like these would suffer a lot if they would need to search through not only Shounen Ai to find these, but though Yaoi as well.

Yaoi may include rape and things in the direction of rape. It's often still not considered Adult or Mature though, especially in older mangas it seems at times like rape is considered a rather normal thing in the gay scene... There is also the issue with Yaoi having lots of sex without being considered Smut. That would be another reason for not simply merging them. And I assume that quite a few Yaoi with younger characters should have the Shotacon genre as well...

In general there seems a bit of an issue with genres clashing. All Yuri/Yaoi should be either Adult or Mature, many of them should be Smut or Hentai, not to mention that I am not too sure how to differentiate between Adult and Mature. If these things were solved (which doesn't seem possible), than merging would be more realistic since you simply could search for Shounen Ai with BL enabled and Adult/Mature disabled.

Oh, yeah! I didn't think of that. Maybe that's actually a nice suggestion for Advanced Search... the option to be A&B and A or B.