A physiotherapy clinic in Norwich moved across town three years ago. The website and the Business Profile were updated that week, and the old address still sits on two directories, a charity's sponsor page and a structured data block in the site's code. A new patient who trusted the directory is standing outside an empty unit. Google builds its picture of your business from every mention of it on the web, and where those mentions disagree it trusts the picture less.
What NAP is, and why Google checks that it matches
NAP is the shorthand for the three details that identify a local business: its name, its address and its phone number. A citation is any mention of those details on a site you don't own: a directory, a trade body, a supplier's stockist list, a news story. Together they are the evidence Google has that a real business trades under this name at this place.
The mechanism is reconciliation. Google collects mentions from across the web and resolves them to one entity, the business behind your Business Profile. Mentions that agree reinforce it. Mentions that disagree, an old address, a second number, a slightly different name, leave Google less certain which details are current, and sometimes whether two listings are the same business at all.
Google's help on improving local ranking says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results, and that inaccurate information can keep a profile out of relevant searches in your area. Google has never said how much weight third-party listings carry, so their effect beyond your own profile and site is inferred, not documented. The cost to customers is not: a wrong number on a directory sends a call to a dead line.
What counts as a match
Your Business Profile's name, address and phone are the master record, because the profile is what Google ranks, so check them against Google's guidelines for representing your business first. The name should be your real-world name, with no added services, towns or taglines. The address must be your actual location, never a PO box or a virtual office, and a service-area business should hide its address rather than list one. The phone should connect to that location, be under your direct control, and be a local number rather than a call-centre line where possible.
Once the profile is right, everything else should match it. Google reconciles small formatting differences, "St" against "Street" or a postcode with or without a space, every day, though it doesn't publish how tolerant it is, so copy the profile character for character. The differences that do real damage are different in kind: a different name ("Harbour Plumbing" on the profile, "Harbour Plumbing and Heating Ltd" on a directory), an old address or a missing unit number, and a different phone number, most often a call-tracking number added to one channel and never removed. Pick one number as the business's number everywhere Google can read, and keep tracking numbers inside channels Google doesn't index, such as paid ads.
Build the master record, then find what disagrees
This is a one-afternoon job in a spreadsheet.
- Copy the name, address and phone from your Business Profile into the top row of a sheet; that row is the standard every listing is measured against.
- Check your own site first: the footer, the contact page, every location page, and the structured data in the page code.
- Search Google for your phone number in quotation marks, then for any old number, then for your business name with the old street name. Each listing that appears is a citation to record.
- Look yourself up on Apple Maps (managed through Apple Business Connect), on Bing Places, and on the directories specific to your trade and your town.
- For every listing, record the site, the URL, what's wrong, how it can be changed and a status.
Fix what matters, then stop
Work the list in order of how much each listing is read: your own site, then the profile, then the map services built into phones, then the directories and trade bodies customers in your area actually open. A listing nobody visits is still worth correcting when it's wrong, because Google may read it even if people don't.
Three situations come up every time. An unclaimed listing with wrong details usually has a claim or "suggest an edit" route; use it, and expect edits to take weeks to appear. A duplicate Business Profile should be reported to Google as a duplicate rather than left to compete with you. And a listing you can't edit and whose owner doesn't reply is one stale mention among many consistent ones; fix the rest and let it be outvoted.
Don't turn this into a numbers game. Google has never quantified citations, and most experienced local SEOs treat them as hygiene: get the listings that matter correct, then spend the time on reviews and local links, which later lessons cover.
Keep it consistent when something changes
Every mismatch started as a change nobody propagated. When you move, change number, rebrand or open a second branch, update the Business Profile, the website (including the structured data) and the spreadsheet on the same day; the sheet now doubles as the list of places to notify. Check it once a quarter.
What to take away
- NAP is your name, address and phone; a citation is any mention of them on a site you don't own, and together they are Google's evidence that your business is real and current.
- Your Business Profile is the master record: make it match Google's guidelines first, then make everything else match it character for character.
- Find mismatches by checking your own site, searching for your phone number and old details, and recording every listing in a sheet.
- Fix the listings people and Google actually read, report duplicates, and keep the sheet as the notification list for the next change.
Next
With the details consistent everywhere, state them in a form Google reads without guessing: LocalBusiness schema shows what to add and how to validate it.