NAP Consistency

Whether a business's Name, Address, and Phone number are spelled and formatted identically everywhere they appear online — Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, the business's website, industry directories, etc.

Definition

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone. NAP consistency is the principle that Google (and other search engines) gain confidence in a business's legitimacy when the same NAP appears identically across many independent sources on the web. Inconsistencies — 'Joe's Plumbing' here, 'Joe's Plumbing LLC' there, two different suite numbers on different directories, an old phone number on one site — are commonly cited as a negative ranking signal for local SEO. The practical work is auditing every place your business is listed (Yelp, Facebook, BBB, industry directories) and ensuring the NAP matches your Google Business Profile and your website's contact page exactly, character for character.

Example

A salon's Google profile says '15 Main St, Suite B,' their Yelp says '15 Main Street #B,' their Facebook says '15 Main Street, Ste. B.' All three are technically the same address but represent inconsistent NAP. A 30-minute audit + cleanup harmonizes all three to one canonical version. Local rankings are commonly observed to improve over the following weeks.

Related terms

  • Local SEO →The discipline of getting a local business to rank in Google's local results — the map pack, Google Maps, and 'near me' searches — rather than the general organic web results.
  • Google Business Profile →The free Google product (formerly Google My Business) that powers a business's listing in Google Search and Google Maps — including the photos, hours, posts, Q&A, and reviews shown when someone searches the business name or its category.

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