Local Citations and NAP

A citation is a mention of your business's name, address and phone number — NAP — on a website other than your own. Directories, maps, trade bodies, news sites, supplier pages. Google reads them to corroborate that the business on your profile is real, is where it says it is, and is called what it says it is. Ten years ago citation volume was a ranking lever. Today the lever is accuracy, and the goal is a modest number of correct, relevant, claimed listings.

Why they still matter

• Trust. A profile whose details match everywhere is more likely to be shown; one whose phone number disagrees with Yell and whose address disagrees with Companies House is not.
• Discovery. Apple Maps, Bing, in-car navigation and voice assistants use their own data sources. Being wrong there costs customers directly.
• Links and referrals. The good directories send traffic and a link.
• AI answers. AI Overviews and assistants cross-reference sources. Consistent data is more likely to be surfaced.

Step 1: audit what exists

Search, in quotes, for your current phone number, any previous phone numbers, your business name with each address you have ever traded from, and the name of any previous trading name. Record every result in a spreadsheet: source, URL, name shown, address shown, phone shown, whether claimed. You will find old addresses, a previous owner's number, a "(Ltd)" variant, and at least one listing you never created.

Step 2: decide the canonical NAP

One exact format for the name, address and phone. Match it to your Google Business Profile and Companies House. Decide once on "Unit 4" vs "Unit 4," and "Ltd" vs "Limited" and use it everywhere from now on.

Step 3: fix, claim, remove

Correct wrong listings first — they do more harm than missing ones do good. Claim unclaimed ones so nobody else can edit them. Request removal of duplicates and listings for closed premises. Keep the logins in one place; you will need them again.

Step 4: build the ones that matter

For a UK business the sources fall into four tiers:

1. Core maps and data providers — Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, and the data aggregators that feed sat-navs and apps (Foursquare, Factual/Foursquare Places, Data Axle). These fix the "wrong pin in the car" problem.
2. Major UK general directories — Yell, Thomson Local, Scoot, 192.com, Cylex, Hotfrog, FreeIndex, Yelp UK, UK Small Business Directory.
3. Industry and professional sources — Checkatrade, TrustATrader, Rated People and Which? Trusted Traders for trades; NHS, CQC and Doctify for health; the Law Society, ICAEW, ACCA, RICS and similar for professions; TripAdvisor and OpenTable for hospitality. These carry the most weight for relevance and often the most referral traffic.
4. Local sources — chamber of commerce, BID, council business listings, local newspaper directories, community sites. Individually small, collectively a local prominence signal nobody else has.

Fill each listing fully: categories, description, hours, photos, website link. A bare NAP listing is a weak citation; a complete one is a small landing page.

The current list, with links, is maintained at UK local citations: the directories that still matter.

Step 5: put the canonical data on your website

NAP in the footer of every page, in text (not an image), and LocalBusiness (or a subtype like Dentist or Plumber) schema on the contact or location page with the same values, plus opening hours, geo coordinates and a sameAs array pointing to your profiles. This gives Google an authoritative source to reconcile everything else against.

What to skip

• Paid "500 citations" packages. They create the duplicates you will spend next year cleaning up.
• Directories that exist only to sell listings and have no traffic.
• Automated aggregator submissions for businesses that have moved recently — fix the source data first or you propagate the error.

Maintenance

Directories re-import data and users suggest edits. Recheck the tier 1 and 2 sources every quarter, and every time you change a phone number, address or name, update the profile first, then the website, then work down the spreadsheet.

We do this as a stand-alone citation service and as part of every plan.

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Part of the complete UK local SEO guide.