NAP Consistency
Making sure your business Name, Address, and Phone number appear identically everywhere they show up online.
Last reviewed: 2026-05-07
Definition
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone — the three pieces of information Google uses as the fingerprint that identifies a real-world business. NAP consistency means those three fields are written exactly the same way on every directory, social profile, review site, and your own website.
Even small differences hurt: "St" vs "Street", "(212) 555-0100" vs "212.555.0100", "Joe's Pizza" vs "Joes Pizza Inc." Google's local algorithm treats each variant as a possible separate business, splits the trust signals between them, and dilutes ranking for all.
NAP shows up in three places that matter: your Google Business Profile, your website (usually footer + contact page with schema markup), and dozens of citations across directories like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, and industry sites.
The fix is mechanical, not creative: pick one canonical version of your name, address, and phone, write it down, and audit every public listing against it. Most restaurants find 20-50 inconsistencies on their first pass.
Why it matters for restaurants
NAP inconsistency is one of the most common reasons a restaurant ranks lower than it should. Google sees mixed signals about who you are and where you are, so it hedges. Fixing NAP is the cheapest local SEO work you can do — pure cleanup, no ongoing cost, lasting effect.
Example
A taqueria in Phoenix had its phone number listed five different ways across its website, GBP, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and four food directories. After standardizing to a single format and pushing the corrected version to all 30 of their listings, their position for 'tacos phoenix' climbed from 8 to 3 over six weeks.
Related terms
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