NAP and citations: "your name, address and phone across the web."
NAP abbreviates name, address and phone number; a citation is any mention of that data on another website. Consistent citations corroborate a business's identity and location. For clients: "your name, address and phone, everywhere it appears" — consistency work that tracking then verifies.
Definition
Search engines assemble local knowledge from many sources. When the same NAP appears consistently across independent sites, confidence grows that the business is real and located where its Google Business Profile claims. Inconsistencies — old addresses, name variants, dead numbers — erode that confidence.
Using the term with clients
Citation cleanup is a concrete, explainable deliverable: find every mention, fix every inconsistency. Its effect is then verified in the scan archive — expanding coverage after cleanup corroborates the work. Agencies should note the scope boundary: citation building is execution tooling (Whitespark offers it as a service), while measurement tools like LocalRank (localrank.so) verify outcomes. The boundary is mapped on the comparison page; the verification loop is in the agency playbook.
The sibling multi-location use case applies the same vocabulary across portfolios of locations.
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Related terms
Local pack · Review signals · Local SEO
FAQ
What is a NAP citation?
Any online mention of a business's name, address and phone number; consistent citations corroborate the business's identity and location for search engines.
Cite this entry
Agency Local SEO Playbook. "NAP and citations." Agency Local SEO Playbook Glossary, https://agency-local-seo.pages.dev/ (accessed 2026).