A local citation is any mention of your business name, address and phone number (NAP) on another site, such as a map listing, a directory or a trade association page. Google lists prominence, meaning how well-known a business is, among its three local ranking factors. Matching details everywhere help customers and search engines trust them.
| Kind of listing | Examples | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Map platforms | Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect | First |
| Your own website | Contact page, footer, LocalBusiness structured data | First |
| Social profiles | Facebook page, Instagram bio | High |
| Trade and local bodies | Trade associations, chamber of commerce, local council lists | Medium |
| General directories | Yelp and similar sites in your country | Medium |
Updated
You do not need hundreds of listings. You need the important ones to say exactly the same thing. Paste your listings into the checker below, one per line, and it shows which details differ from your main version, all on your own device.
The first line is your master version. Everything runs in this browser.
Master | Harbour Street Bakery | 12 Harbour Street, Portsmouth PO1 2AB | 023 9200 0000
Google | Harbour Street Bakery | 12 Harbour St, Portsmouth PO1 2AB | 023 9200 0000
Facebook | Harbour St. Bakery Ltd | 12 Harbour Street, Portsmouth PO1 2AB | 02392 000000
Old directory | Harbour Street Bakery | 4 Quay Lane, Portsmouth PO1 3CD | 023 9200 11111 of 3 listings differ from the master.
Google's LocalBusiness structured data requires name and address and recommends telephone, url, geo and opening hours. Use the same details as your listings.
Place it in a script tag of type application/ld+json on the page about this location. A more specific type such as Bakery also works.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Bakery",
"name": "Harbour Street Bakery",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "12 Harbour Street",
"addressLocality": "Portsmouth",
"postalCode": "PO1 2AB",
"addressCountry": "GB"
},
"telephone": "+44 23 9200 0000",
"url": "https://example.com/"
}A structured citation sits in a set of fields, such as a directory profile. An unstructured one is a mention inside an article or a local news story.
You control the structured ones, so start there. Unstructured mentions come from doing things worth writing about locally.
Search for your old phone number and old address in quotes to find listings that still carry them. Claim each listing and correct it, or ask the site to remove a duplicate.
Name, address and phone number. Some people add W for website. They are the details that identify a local business across listings.
Google says prominence is partly based on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. Listings on real sites can add those links and, just as important, accurate ones stop customers turning up at an old address.
Google's guidelines say businesses serving customers at the customer's location should have one profile with a service area. Many hide the street address on their listing; keep whatever you do show consistent.
No. The comparison runs in your browser. It cannot fetch other sites, so you paste the details you see on each listing.
Related: Small business SEO, Bing Places for Business, Location pages SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, Schema markup generator.
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