How to check NAP consistency: a step-by-step NAP audit

What a NAP consistency check covers

Strictly, NAP is three fields. In practice a useful check covers five things, because search engines and customers trip over all of them:

• Name — the same trading name everywhere, with the same punctuation and suffix.
• Address — the same street, suite and formatting, and a map pin on the right building.
• Phone — the same primary number, not a tracking number or a retired line.
• Website — the same domain, pointing at your site rather than a social profile.
• Duplicates and gaps — one listing per location per directory, and no directory your customers use where you are missing entirely.

Step 1: Decide your canonical NAP

Every comparison needs a reference. Use your Google Business Profile, because it is the listing customers see most and the one other directories copy from. Open it, and write down the name, address, phone and website exactly as shown. Small formatting differences are not errors in themselves, but copying exactly means you never create one.

While you do, settle the formatting questions once so you never have to think about them again:

• "Suite 200" or "Ste 200"; "Street" or "St". Google normalizes these, most directories do not, so pick one and use it everywhere.
• Whether the legal suffix ("LLC", "Inc.") is part of the public name. Match your signage.
• One phone format, such as (602) 555-0100. Digits are what matter, but a consistent format makes visual checks faster.
• The website with https:// and with or without www, matching how your site actually resolves.
• If customers do not visit you, the canonical address is "hidden, service area shown", and every directory that supports that setting should use it.

Step 2: Find every listing

Work through the ten directories below in order. For each, search by business name and city, then search again by phone number, because a listing with an old name will not turn up under the new one.

1. Google Business Profile — your baseline. Also search Google Maps for your address alone to catch a second profile at the same location.
2. Yelp — search yelp.com, then search Google for "your phone number" yelp. Note whether the page is claimed.
3. Facebook — search Facebook for the name; unofficial Pages created from check-ins often carry an old address.
4. Bing — search Bing Maps. Bing Places may hold a listing imported years ago from another source.
5. Foursquare — search foursquare.com or the Swarm app. This data feeds Uber, Snapchat and others.
6. HERE — search wego.here.com. This data feeds most in-car navigation.
7. Nextdoor — search nextdoor.com/find-business; a page may exist from neighbor recommendations.
8. Tripadvisor — only if you are a hotel, restaurant, attraction or tour.
9. Better Business Bureau — search bbb.org. Profiles are created from public records whether you asked or not.
10. YellowPages.com — search by name and by phone; old listings linger here for years.

Two extra searches catch what the directories hide. Search Google for your old phone number in quotes, and for your old address in quotes, if you have moved or changed numbers. Anything that comes up is a listing that still needs fixing.

Step 3: Compare field by field

For each listing you found, put it next to your canonical NAP and judge each field. The rules that keep this consistent:

• Name: a missing word, an added keyword or city, a different suffix, or an old trading name is a mismatch. A difference only in capitalization or an ampersand versus "and" is not worth chasing.
• Address: a missing suite number, a different street number, or an old address is a mismatch. Abbreviation differences are minor, but fix them when you are already editing the listing.
• Phone: compare digits only. A different number is a mismatch even if it forwards to you; search engines cannot know that.
• Website: compare the domain. A listing that points at your Facebook Page, an old domain or a booking platform is a mismatch.
• Map pin: open the map view. A pin on the wrong building sends drivers astray even when the text is right.

Step 4: Record and prioritize

Keep a simple sheet with one row per listing: directory, listing URL, name, address, phone, website, what differs, whether the listing is claimed, and the date you fixed it. The sheet is what makes the next check take ten minutes instead of an hour.

Then fix in this order: Google first, because it is the baseline; Yelp and Facebook next, because customers check them most and both accept public edit suggestions; Bing, which can import your Google profile in one step; then Foursquare and HERE, whose data travels into other apps slowly; then the rest. The directory fix guides cover where to sign in and which field to change on each one.

Step 5: Fix, wait, re-check

Most directories review edits before publishing. Facebook and Nextdoor are immediate; Google, Yelp and Bing take hours to days; Tripadvisor and BBB can take a week or two; HERE's edits reach car navigation only with the next map release, which can be months. Note the date of each change in your sheet, wait two to four weeks, and run the check again. Re-submitting a change that is simply still pending is the most common way to make a listing worse.

Doing it with a NAP checker instead

There are three kinds of NAP consistency tools, and the differences matter more than the price.

• Paste-and-compare forms. You still find each listing yourself and type in what it shows; the tool highlights the differences. These save a little time on Step 3 and none on Step 2.
• Scanners. The tool fetches the live listings and compares them for you. NAPCHKR is a free scanner: it pulls your Google Business Profile, fetches your listings on Bing, Foursquare, HERE, Tripadvisor and Nextdoor and compares every field, then finds your Yelp, BBB, YellowPages and Facebook pages through Google and compares the phone number shown there, all in about 30 seconds.
• Paid trackers. BrightLocal's Citation Tracker, Moz Local, Whitespark and Yext cover dozens more directories, monitor continuously and, in some cases, push corrections for you. They make sense for agencies and multi-location businesses; for a single location, a free scan every quarter covers the directories that move rankings.

How often to check

Once a quarter is enough for a business that has not changed anything. Check immediately after you move, change your phone number, rename or rebrand, or open a second location. Check again whenever Google or Yelp notifies you of a suggested edit, because a public edit on one directory tends to spread to the others.

The short version

1. Copy your canonical NAP from your Google Business Profile and settle the formatting rules.
2. Find your listing on each of the ten directories, searching by name and by phone.
3. Compare name, address, phone, website and map pin against the canonical version.
4. Record what differs; fix Google, then Yelp and Facebook, then the rest.
5. Wait for review periods to pass, then check again. Repeat quarterly.