Fixing NAP Inconsistency

Why small differences cause real problems

Search engines, map apps and voice assistants build their picture of a local business by combining records from many places: your Business Profile, your website, directories, social profiles, review sites and data suppliers. When those records agree, it is easy to be confident they describe one business at one place. When they disagree, systems have to guess.

The harm comes in three ways:

• Customers act on the wrong details. A directory showing a number you gave up three years ago sends calls nowhere. An old address sends people to an empty unit.
• Google may change your profile. Google updates profiles using information from other sources and public suggestions. If enough sources carry an old phone number, it can end up back on your profile.
• Records get split or merged wrongly. Different versions of the name or address can look like separate businesses, creating duplicate listings that divide reviews, or can cause your listing to be muddled with a neighbour's.

Consistency is not about making every character identical on every site, which is often impossible given different directory forms. It is about there being one clear, correct version, and no conflicting versions left for anyone to find.

The variations that matter and the ones that do not

Spend your time on differences that would send a customer or a courier to the wrong place, or that make one business look like two. Cosmetic formatting differences can wait until you are updating a listing for another reason.

Choosing the canonical version

Before touching any listing, write down exactly how the business should appear. This becomes the reference every future edit is checked against.

Name

Use the name customers see on your signs, vehicles, invoices and website. If your registered company name is different, such as "Brookvale Heating Services Limited" trading as "Brookvale Plumbing and Heating", the trading name is the one for listings. Do not add towns or services to it.

Address

Use the form in Royal Mail's Postcode Address File, which you can look up with Royal Mail's postcode finder. That is the format delivery companies and many address systems recognise. Decide once how you write the unit or floor, and include it everywhere. A few practical points:

• Registered office versus trading address. Many companies have a registered office at their accountant's address. That address belongs on Companies House and in the legal footer of your website, not on listings, which should carry the place you trade from.
• Service-area businesses. If you hide your address on Google, keep it off public listings too wherever the directory allows, and use the town only. See the service-area guide.
• Shared buildings. Include the building name and unit so you are not confused with other businesses at the same street number.

Phone

Choose one main number that reaches the business directly, ideally a local landline number rather than a national call centre number. Write it in one standard way on your own materials.

A canonical record you can copy

Name:      Brookvale Plumbing and Heating
Address:   Unit 7, Riverside Park
           Mill Lane
           Brookvale
           BV3 5QT
Phone:     01632 960789
Website:   https://example.co.uk/
Hours:     Mon to Fri 08:00 to 17:30; Sat 09:00 to 12:00
Registered office (legal footer only): 14 Queen Street, Brookvale, BV1 2AB

Call tracking numbers without breaking consistency

Marketing tracking numbers are the most common modern cause of NAP inconsistency. An agency sets a different number on each directory to measure calls, and a few years later the business has fifteen numbers online, several no longer diverting anywhere.

• Directories and citations. Use your main number. Tracking the calls from a small directory is rarely worth the lasting inconsistency.
• Business Profile. Some businesses use a tracking number on the profile to measure calls from Google. Guidance from Google's own help community has generally been to put the tracking number as the primary number and keep the main number as an additional phone on the profile, so the main number stays connected to the business. Check Google's current guidance before doing this.
• Website. Dynamic number insertion, where a script swaps the number shown to visitors from ads, is fine if the main number is in the page's HTML before the script runs and in any structured data.
• Ending a tracking contract. Ask the provider to keep numbers forwarding for as long as possible, and replace them on every listing before they are switched off.

Finding the variants

The GBP Audit compares your profile with your website and major citation sources. To find everything else, search for the old details, not the new ones: a wrong listing is by definition one that does not contain your current details.

"01632 960555"                       old phone number, written as usually displayed
"01632960555"                        same number with no spaces
"12 Old Mill Road" Brookvale         previous address
"Brookvale Plumbing" -site:example.co.uk   name mentions outside your own site
"Brookvale Heating Services"         former or legal name

Also check the places that other sites are most likely to copy from or that customers use most:

• Apple Business Connect, which feeds Apple Maps and Siri.
• Bing Places for Business, which feeds Bing and some other services.
• Your Facebook page and other social profiles.
• Large general directories such as Yell.
• Trade bodies and trade directories for your sector, and review sites your customers use.
• Companies House, only to make sure the registered office there is correct for legal purposes.

The wider job of finding directories you are missing from, rather than fixing ones you are on, is covered in the missing citations guide on the local SEO hub.

The fix, step by step

When you move, rebrand or change number

Most NAP problems start with a change that was only half rolled out. Plan the next one:

1. Before the change. Update the canonical record with the new details and an effective date. Make sure the listing log is current.
2. On the day. Change the Business Profile address or number on the existing profile, never by creating a new one, then the website and structured data.
3. In the first week. Update the most copied sources: Apple, Bing, Facebook, the largest directories.
4. In the first month. Work through the rest of the log.
5. Keep the old number forwarding. If you can, divert the old number to the new one for at least a year while old listings are found and corrected.

For a rebrand, keep a line such as "formerly Brookvale Heating Services" on the website's about page for a while so customers searching for the old name understand what happened.

Edge cases

Several businesses at one address

Sole traders who run two businesses from home, or firms that share an office, can each have listings if they are genuinely separate businesses, but each needs its own name and, ideally, its own phone number. Sharing one number across two listings makes them easy to confuse.

Multiple branches

Each branch needs its own canonical record with its own local phone number, not the head office number on every listing. The multi-location guide explains how to manage this with a master spreadsheet and store codes.

Directories that reformat your details

Some sites force their own address format or strip the unit number. Enter the details as closely to the canonical record as the form allows, and put the unit in the second address line if there is no field for it. Differences caused by a site's own formatting are not worth chasing.