NAP Consistency
Also known as: Name, Address, Phone Consistency, Citation Consistency
NAP consistency means your business name, address, and phone number appear identically everywhere they're listed online.
What it actually means
NAP stands for name, address, phone — the three facts that identify your business across Google, Yelp, Facebook, Apple Maps, directories, and your own website. Search engines cross-reference these listings (called citations) to verify you're a real, established business at a real location; mismatches — an old address on Yelp, 'St.' here and 'Street' there, a dead phone number in a directory — erode that confidence and can drag down local rankings. AI answer engines inherit the same confusion, sometimes reciting the outdated fact. An annual audit of your major listings, fixing every variant to one canonical format, is unglamorous work that directly supports local pack visibility.
If you moved locations two years ago, odds are a handful of directories still list the old address — every one is a customer driving to the wrong place and a small vote against your Google ranking.
Related terms
Google Business Profile is the free listing that controls how your business appears in Google Search and Maps — hours, photos, reviews, and posts.
The local pack is the block of three map-pinned business listings Google shows for searches with local intent, above the regular organic results.
Review velocity is the rate at which a business earns new customer reviews — a freshness signal for local rankings and buyer trust.
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