How Inconsistent Business Info Is Costing You Customers (and How to Fix Your NAP Consistency)

You did the work: your Google Business Profile is set up, your Facebook page is live, your shop turns up on Apple Maps, and somewhere along the way a handful of directories picked you up too.

So why is someone still calling a phone number you stopped using two years ago?

The short answer

Unfortunately, it’s not one single mistake.

What happens: lots of small little differences, scattered across different platforms, add up and ultimately confuse search engines.

The result: search engines and mapping platforms like Google and Google Maps lose trust in you and your listing altogether, meaning they won’t be confident to recommend you to anyone searching, and costing you precious visibility.

The cause: usually, the little errors are due to a lack of Name, Address and Phone number (NAP) consistency.

What is NAP consistency, and why does it matter for local SEO?

NAP is one of those acronyms that sounds far more technical than it actually is. It stands for Name, Address, Phone.

NAP consistency means each of these elements (business Name, Address and Phone number) appear identically everywhere online: Google Business Profile, Apple Maps, Facebook and every directory in between.

When the information isn’t the same across each of them, search engines lose confidence in your data, drop your local rankings, and send customers to wrong addresses and dead phone numbers.

And here is the bit that people don’t realize: the system is a LOT more sensitive than you would expect.

Take this for example:

Baan Suay Cafe & Bakery, 42/1 Soi Sukhumvit 31, 02-123-4567
Baan Suay Cafe and Bakery, 42/1 Sukhumvit Soi 31, (02) 123 4567
Baan Suay Cafe, 42/1 Soi 31 Sukhumvit Rd., +66 2 123 4567

To a person, an ampersand (& symbol) instead of using “and”, a stray comma that was put in the wrong spot, or even the same phone number, just written three ways are all just minor little differences describing the same place.

To a search engine, that could be three different businesses at three different addresses!

How does inconsistent business information hurt your Google rankings?

We know for a fact that getting your business visible on Google’s local pack (the three businesses recommended at the top of search results) comes down to three core metrics: relevance, distance and prominence.

Inconsistent information hurts you on prominence, which happens to be the one you have real control over. Prominence is basically whether Google thinks your business is genuine, active and established. It makes this decision partly based on your reviews and photos, and partly from whether the rest of the internet agrees with what your own profile says…which is why it’s so important to have your information be the exact same on other platforms.

When things are different, Google sees this as the rest of the internet not agreeing, and it has a choice to make. It can rank a business whose details it is confident about, or one whose details are a bit of a mess. It picks the confident one nearly every time, and honestly, who could blame it? Sending a customer to a dead phone number reflects badly on Google too!

This matters more now than it did two years ago. When someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation instead of typing a search, that assistant has to choose a small handful of businesses to actually name. Contradictory data is the easiest possible reason to skip you and name somebody else.

How do search engines build a business “trust profile” from citations?

Search engines cannot send somebody to knock on your door and check that you exist. So they do the next best thing: they cross-reference.

What is a citation?

A citation is simply any mention of your business details somewhere online. Your Google Business Profile is one. Your Facebook page is one. So is a listing on a restaurant directory, a chamber of commerce page, a tourism site, or a delivery app.

You did not create most of them, and that is completely normal. Businesses get listed by other people all the time, often without ever being told.

How do local directories and data aggregators feed Google?

Some of these sites do not just hold your details, but actively share them.

For example, data aggregators collect business information in bulk and distribute it out to maps, apps and smaller directories. Sometimes, they distribute information that’s old and no longer correct.

This is why correcting your Google profile on its own sometimes does not stick. You might have updated your profile with the new correct information, but since Google is “listening” to lots of different sources, it might trust all those old sites more than they trust you.

What does inconsistent business info actually cost you?

It’s easy to say that from a marketing perspective, this affects your ranking: you don’t show up in search results as much, and people don’t really see you.

But what’s even more impactful is far more direct, and this is what you’ll actually notice as a business owner:

The first is a phone number that goes nowhere. Somebody wanted to call you. They found a number, they dialed it, and it rang out or reached a stranger. They did not try again, and instead chose to ring the next search result.

The second is an address that sends people to the wrong place. Sure, it might just be one street down, but if it’s one street down on Asok where the traffic is a nightmare? That customer isn’t making a u-turn, they’re moving on.

The third is a name that does not quite look like you. If your sign says one thing and three listings each say something slightly different, a careful customer starts wondering whether they have found the right place at all, or whether you closed and reopened under someone else.

So what does it actually cost you? A lot more than just a few customers, especially if they leave a 1-star review on your business profile! And that’s just the damage you can see. Who knows how many people are calling dead phone numbers, or showing up to a store they thought was yours.

How do you audit your NAP across Google, Facebook and Apple Maps?

Set aside twenty minutes and have somewhere to peacefully write things down, because the entire exercise is as much one of accuracy as it is of patience.

Write down your master version first. Decide, once, exactly how your name, address and phone number should appear. Punctuation, abbreviations, spacing, all of it. This is the version you now use everywhere, forever.
Open your Google Business Profile and compare it against that master version word for word. Not roughly. Word for word.
Do the same on Facebook, and check to check your About section too, not just the page name.
Do the same on Apple Maps, through Apple Business Connect.
Search your own phone number in Google with quote marks around it. Anything that comes back showing a different name or address is a citation that needs fixing.
Search your business name too, and go a couple of pages deep. Old listings tend to be further down the results.
Write down mismatches and where you found it.

Your NAP fix checklist: what to correct first

You might’ve found way more listings to fix than you thought. Fact is, it might even be impossible to fix them all. After all, how do you contact a random old aggregator’s site to get them to take down their decade-old information?

The good news is while Google gets information from tons of sources, there are a few main ones that Google cares about most. These are the ones that people actually visit, use, and vet. These are the ones you should prioritize.

We recommend making your fixes on these platforms:

Google Business Profile: it’s where most of your customers likely are, and it’s Google’s own platform after all!
Apple Maps, through Apple Business Connect: every iPhone uses it by default, and that’s a LOT of users you’ll want to have correct information for.
Facebook, and again, make sure to check your About section.
Anywhere that takes payments or bookings like Grab. A wrong number on a delivery app could cost you money the same day!

And once you’re done with those, here’s the part that matters the most: put a reminder in your calendar to check again in three months.

It’s in the name! NAP “consistency”. As explained above, your NAP information can change because of many things outside of your control, so it’s something you’ve got to get in the habit of doing. Make it a routine for yourself, and future you will thank you.

So do the twenty-minute audit this week. Decide on the “master version” of your details, check your main platforms against it, and fix whatever seems to be different, even if only slightly.

Just like that, you’re on your way to optimizing your local SEO, and getting more customers!