NAP consistency: getting your name, address and phone right

NAP stands for name, address and phone number. NAP consistency means those three details are the same everywhere your business appears online: your Google listing, your website, Facebook, Yell and the trade directories you use. It is dull work, and it is one of the few parts of local search you can fully control.

Why NAP consistency matters

Google says local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence is partly about what the wider web says about you, and consistent listings across well-known directories are generally thought to be one of the signals that feed into it.

Google does not publish exactly how much weight they carry, so treat anyone who promises a ranking jump from citations alone with caution.

The more practical reason is customers. If someone rings an old number from Yell and nobody answers, you never hear about it. You can't tell how many give up and ring someone else, which is exactly why a dead number is worth finding. The same goes for anyone who turns up at your old address.

AI assistants are a newer reason. When they answer "who's good near me" they often cite directory pages as their sources. In the ChatGPT checks Kerbrank ran for one local business in September 2026, booking-site pages were among the sources it drew on.

That is one market and one month, not a rule. Still, whatever a directory says about you is what can get repeated.

Common UK NAP problems

Old addresses

The most common one. You moved premises years ago, updated Google, and forgot the dozen other places that still show the old address. Some directories copy data from each other, so an old address can keep reappearing after you fix it in one place.

Tracking numbers

Call tracking numbers are useful, and Google's guidelines don't ban them. What they ask is that the number connects to your location, is under your direct control, and is a local number rather than a central call centre where possible. They also allow additional phone numbers on your profile.

The problem is drift. A tracking number from an old campaign ends up on one directory, your usual number is on the rest, and a few years later nobody knows which is which.

If you do track calls from your Google profile, a common setup is the tracking number as the main number and your usual local number added as an additional phone, so both stay tied to the listing.

Everywhere else, pick the number you want customers to keep and use it consistently. When a tracking contract ends, check where that number was used before you let it go.

"Rd" versus "Road"

Small formatting differences like "Rd" and "Road", "St" and "Street", or "Unit 4" and "4" are unlikely to confuse Google on their own. Still, pick one format and use it everywhere. It is easier to spot a real mistake when everything else matches exactly.

Unit numbers when sharing premises

Salons inside a larger building, therapists renting a room in a clinic, trades working from a shared yard. If several businesses share one street address, the unit or suite number is what tells them apart.

Leave it off and your listing can look like a duplicate of your neighbour's, or get merged with it. Use the same unit number on Google, your website and every directory.

Business name variations

"Smith & Sons Plumbing", "Smith and Sons", "Smiths Plumbing Ltd". Use the name customers see on your van or sign, and use it the same way everywhere. Do not add keywords or town names to the name on your listings.

How to audit the main UK directories

Start with your Google Business Profile, because that is the version you will copy everywhere else. Write your name, address and phone down exactly as they appear there. Then work through the list below, searching each site for your business name and your old details.

For each one, note whether the listing exists, whether you can log in to it, and what is wrong. If you cannot log in, most directories have a claim process for business owners.

A few tips for the checking itself:

• Search by your old phone number and old address as well as your name. That is how you find the listings you forgot about.
• Check for duplicates. Two listings for one business on the same directory is common after a move.
• Keep a record: site, login, date checked, what you changed. You will be glad of it next time.

Download the NAP audit sheet (CSV, opens in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets). It has a row for each place above, plus searches for your old number and old address, and columns for what each listing shows, what's wrong and when you fixed it.

A worked example

Here is what a filled-in audit looks like. The business is made up (Harbour Plumbing, the same example business used in our screenshots), but every problem in it is a common one. Its Google profile reads: Harbour Plumbing, Unit 4, Quay Yard, 12 Dock Road, Portsmouth PO1 3AB, 023 9600 0123.

The fix order matters. Google first, because it's the master copy. Then the website, because you control it completely. Then the directories, starting with the ones that rank when you search your own business name, because those are the ones customers actually land on.

Our local SEO audit puts this step alongside the other checks worth doing at the same time, and the Google Business Profile optimisation post covers getting the source listing right first.

Your website: the part people forget

Your website is itself a citation, and it is the one you control completely. Check two things.

First, the visible details. The name, address and phone in your footer and contact page should match Google exactly.

Second, the structured data. Many sites include LocalBusiness schema in the page code, which lists your name, address, phone and often map coordinates. You cannot see it on the page, so it tends to go wrong without anyone noticing, especially when a site was built from a template or copied from an older one.

Measured on a real websiteReal data

To check yours, run your homepage through Google's Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator. Look for the address, phone and the latitude and longitude values. Paste the coordinates into Google Maps and see where they land. If the pin is somewhere other than your door, ask whoever looks after your website to correct it.

Kerbrank's weekly tracking does this comparison for you: it reads the schema, checks that your Google phone number and postcode appear on the site, and flags a schema pin more than 500 m from Google's.

That is handy if you look after several sites. For a single business, the manual check above once a year does the job. The free check on this site is a map ranking check, not this website comparison.

Keeping it consistent

Most NAP problems start with a change. Before you move, change your number or rename the business, make a list of every place you are listed. Update Google first, then your website, then work through the directories. Check again a couple of months later, because copied data has a habit of coming back.

If your listing has vanished from the map entirely, a NAP clash or a merged listing is one of the things to check. Our post on why a business is not showing on Google Maps goes through the other likely causes.

Common questions