What NAP means
NAP = Name, Address, Phone. A citation is any place online that lists your NAP — directories (Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps), your website, social profiles, industry sites.
Why consistency matters
Google cross-checks your NAP across the web to confirm you're a real, single business. If your phone number or address is written three different ways, that ambiguity erodes trust (prominence) and can hurt your ranking. Even small differences — "St." vs "Street", an old suite number — add up.
How to clean it up
- Pick one canonical format for your NAP and use it everywhere.
- Fix the big, high-authority listings first: Google, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, Facebook.
- Search your old phone numbers and addresses to find stale listings, and update or remove them.
- After any move or number change, do a citation sweep — this is the #1 cause of mysterious local ranking drops.
Consistency is unglamorous but it's foundational. Get it right once and maintain it.