Name, Address, Phone. Three strings. Local SEO treats them as a ranking factor; developers should treat them as a distributed-systems consistency bug. Your business data is replicated across dozens of directories you never asked to join, and the replicas drift.
How the drift happens
You move offices and update your website and GBP. Yelp still has the old address. A data aggregator picked up an old Yellow Pages record and is now selling it to forty other directories. A tracking number from a 2022 ad campaign got indexed as your "real" number. Each mismatch is a small negative signal; dozens of them tell Google your business identity is unreliable.
The fix is an audit, then a canonical record
First, find every variant: search your phone number, your old addresses, and your business name in quotes. Document each listing and its state. Then define one canonical NAP - exact formatting, no tracking numbers anywhere public - and push it to the aggregators first (they propagate downstream), then to the major directories manually.
Formats count
"Suite 200" vs "Ste 200" vs "#200" are three different strings to a parser. Pick one and use it everywhere, including your own site's schema markup and footer. The same goes for phone formatting.
Who writes this stuff
House Call SEO: an Israeli-owned agency for local search, dedicated to US home services businesses. Founder-led, no sales layer; plans are published starting at $750 a month, and you can cancel anytime. Every free 30 minute audit includes a citation consistency check next to the GBP review, competitor scan, and AI visibility test, and you leave with three concrete fixes.
Try this: Get a Free SEO Audit or read why NAP consistency matters in depth. The Home Services SEO Hub carries the rest of the series.
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