What is NAP Consistency?
NAP consistency means a business publishes exactly the same name, address and phone number everywhere it appears online — its own site, its business profile, directories, and social pages. Discrepancies split the evidence for a single business across several partly-matching records.
- Category
- Search, AEO & AI Visibility
- Also called
- Name, Address, Phone consistency, Citation consistency
The failure is rarely dramatic. It is an abbreviated street type in one listing, an old mobile number in another, a trading name on a third. Each looks harmless; together they weaken the match confidence that local ranking and AI-answer sourcing depend on.
The fix is procedural rather than technical: write the canonical form down once, use it verbatim on every submission, and audit existing listings against it before creating new ones.
Related terms.
Local SEO
Search, AEO & AI VisibilityLocal SEO is optimisation for searches with geographic intent — queries naming a city, or carrying implicit "near me" intent.
Entity SEO
Search, AEO & AI VisibilityEntity SEO is the practice of making a search engine resolve a business, person or product as one distinct thing rather than a set of unconnected mentions.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Search, AEO & AI VisibilityA Google Business Profile is the free listing that determines whether a business appears in Google Maps and the local map results, and what shows in its knowledge panel.
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