NAP Consistency Checker
Check NAP consistency across directories with fix recommendations.
NAP Consistency Checker for the difference you just spotted
We read the name, address and phone number on your live Google Places record, read the same three things off your own website, and show you exactly where they differ. Most of what it finds needs no action, and we say so rather than colouring it red. The rows that do matter are the ones where the facts conflict — a different phone number, an address you left behind — and those are the ones that quietly undo your edits.
Built and reviewed by Sayed Hasan, founder of SEOs Hut · Updated 28 September 2026 · Free, no signup
does NAP consistency still matter as much as it used to or not
Less than the scare pages suggest, and not in the way they claim. No Google document states any ranking penalty for inconsistent formatting, and Google normalises abbreviations itself. What matters is conflicting facts: a different phone number, an old address still live in your site's footer, a name that doesn't match your signage. Your own website matching your profile is the highest-placed NAP factor in Whitespark's 2026 study, at #15.
There is no documented NAP penalty. Nobody will tell you that.
Every page ranking for this subject asserts that mismatched name, address and phone details hurt your rankings. No Google document says so. What Google documents is something different and more useful: that it normalises address formats, and that it builds your profile partly from other sources. So "St" against "Street" is not a problem waiting to be punished — it is a problem that does not exist. A phone number that differs by one digit is a real problem, for a reason that has nothing to do with penalties: it sends a customer to the wrong place, and 62% of consumers say they would avoid a business if they found incorrect information online.
The difference you found, and whether it matters
You probably arrived holding one specific mismatch. Find it here. The third column is a real verdict, including "ignore", which is the honest answer for the first three rows and which no other page on this subject is willing to print.
| The difference you found | What Google documents about it | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "St" on your website, "Street" on your profile | Google normalises address formats and will overwrite what you type to match postal authority data. No document mentions a penalty for either form. | Ignore. You cannot win this one because Google keeps rewriting it anyway. |
| "Ste 200" against "Suite 200" | Same normalisation. Nothing in Google's guidelines distinguishes the two. | Ignore. |
| Phone written (415) 555-0134 in one place and 415-555-0134 in another | Nothing in Google's guidelines addresses punctuation in phone numbers. | Ignore. Pick one for tidiness, not for rankings. |
| LLC or LTD on your profile, absent from your website | Irrelevant legal terms such as LLC, LTD and INC are not permitted in the profile name unless you can provide real-world proof — signage, business cards, invoices — that consistently displays them. | Act. Match your signage, not your paperwork. If the sign does not say LLC, take it off the profile. |
| A call-tracking number on your profile instead of your real line | The number must be under the direct control of the business, should be a local number rather than a central call-centre helpline, and must not redirect or refer users to numbers other than the actual business's. Additional phone numbers can be used. | Act. Keep your real local number as the primary and add the tracking number as an additional number. Substituting it is the part that breaks the rule. |
| Your old address still sitting in your website footer | Google builds profiles from publicly available information including crawled web content from a business's official website, from licensed third-party data, and from users who contribute facts such as addresses and phone numbers. | Act today. This is the mechanism that undoes your edits, and it is inside your own control. |
| Your hours or phone changed and you did not change them | The same documentation invites the public to suggest an edit or flag a profile for removal. Third-party edits to your facts are a designed feature. | Act, then diarise it. Check monthly. This is the one thing on this page that never stops needing attention. |
| Unit or floor number missing from the address | You must not include information in address lines that does not pertain to your physical location, and businesses showing an address should maintain permanent fixed signage. | Act only if customers cannot find your door. Otherwise leave it. |
| A P.O. box or mailbox service as your address | P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes are not acceptable, and a virtual office is not eligible for a Business Profile. | Act. This is an eligibility problem, not a consistency one, and it will not be fixed by editing your footer. |
| A co-working desk as your address | It qualifies only if it maintains clear signage, receives customers at the location during business hours, and is staffed during business hours by your own staff. | Act. If you cannot meet all three, do not show that address at all. |
Scroll the table sideways to see every column.
Where these actually sit in Whitespark's 2026 ranking of 187 factors: your own site's HTML details matching your profile is #15, score 153 — above every directory consideration. Consistency on Google, Bing and Apple Maps is #28 (124). Quality of structured citations #49 (105). Data-aggregator consistency #85 (91). Details in schema markup #118 (73).
Why Google keeps putting your old address back
If you have edited the same field three times and watched it revert, you are not being penalised and you have not hit a bug. You are losing an argument with another source.
Google states where profile information comes from, and the list is short: publicly available information such as crawled web content, including a business's official website; licensed data from third parties; users who contribute factual information such as addresses and phone numbers; and Google's own interactions with the place. Read that as a ranking of suspects. If something still carries your old details, Google may prefer it to the edit you just saved.
That is why the fix order is the opposite of what feels natural. Your own website first, every instance of it — footer, contact page, booking form, PDF price list, the schema in your theme. Then the listings that carry the old details: find every directory entry still holding the old record, because an inconsistency almost always means listings you had forgotten you owned. Then wait, because propagation is not instant.
There is a second reason to do it in that order. Conflicting facts across the web are one of the commonest reasons Google will not resolve a brand to a single identity at all, so check whether Google currently treats your business as one entity before you conclude the problem is local to the profile. And once the details are genuinely settled, encode them in LocalBusiness schema so the version on your own site is machine-readable rather than only visible to a human reading your footer.
One of these is an emergency and one is nothing
Anyone with a Google account can change your hours
Not your staff. Anyone. The same documentation that explains where profile data comes from also directs the public to suggest an edit, and those suggestions can reach your hours, your phone number and even your business name. This is a designed feature, not an exploit, which is why consistency is a monitoring job rather than a one-afternoon project. A competitor marking you closed on a Saturday is rare. A well-meaning customer correcting your hours to the ones on a sign you took down last year is not.
You do not have to publish your home address
This is the quiet worry underneath a lot of consistency questions, and there is a documented answer.
Google's rules speak of businesses that show an address, which tells you the rest: a business that visits its customers does not have to. What you set instead is a service area — up to 20 areas, defined by city, postal code or region. You can no longer set a radius, and if you set one years ago you cannot edit it. Google also says a service area should not extend beyond about two hours of driving time, and that approved service-area changes can take up to 48 hours.
The trap is doing it halfway. Keep the address hidden but leave it in your website footer, in an old directory listing and in your email signature, and you have published it anyway while making your own records disagree. The same applies to social accounts, which carry address and phone details and are the listings people forget exist — find every profile live under your business name and check what each one is telling people. And if you want to know whether the contradictions are already showing up in AI answers, test what the engines currently say about you: conflicting facts are exactly what makes an assistant hedge or leave you out.
The fix cycle, end to end
Almost every panic about this starts at minute eleven. Here is the documented shape of it, so you know when to worry and when to make a cup of tea.
You save the edit
Nothing visible happens. This is normal and it is not a sign of a suspension.
Most edits appear
Google's documented typical case: profile changes usually take about ten minutes to show up.
Fix your own website
Footer, contact page, booking form, schema. Skip this and the next step undoes your work, because your official website is on Google's documented list of sources.
Approved service-area changes land
Service-area edits are documented separately and can take up to two days once approved.
The documented outer limit
Google's own wording: in some cases it can take up to 30 days. An edit that has not appeared after a week is still inside the normal window.
Check for edits you did not make
Because the public can suggest changes to your facts at any time, and nothing tells you to look.
Four bits of jargon, translated
- NAP
- Name, address, phone. A consultant's abbreviation for the three facts on your listing. Nobody outside the trade says it, and nothing about it is technical.
- Normalisation
- Google rewriting your address into a standard form — expanding or shortening Street, Suite, Road — to match postal authority data. It is why fighting over abbreviations is unwinnable and unnecessary.
- Suggest an edit
- The documented route by which any member of the public can propose a change to your hours, phone number or name. Approved suggestions change your listing without asking you.
- Additional phone number
- A second number Google allows you to list alongside your main one. This is where a call-tracking number belongs — as an addition, never as a replacement for the real local line.
- Service area
- Up to 20 cities, postal codes or regions you say you serve, used instead of showing a street address. Radius areas can no longer be set, and old ones cannot be edited.
Do it in this order and stop checking hourly
Fix your own website first, because it is the source Google is documented to crawl and the highest-placed factor of the lot at #15. Then the three maps platforms. Then the old directory listings. Then leave it alone for a fortnight, because the documented window runs to 30 days. When the canonical details are finally settled, audit the profile itself — the record you want everything else to copy should be the one that is right.
NAP Consistency Checker FAQ
My Google business page is showing an old address when searched
Google maps pin keeps reverting to old location
Do I really have to put 'LLC' everywhere my business name appears
should I use a tracking number on my google business profile
can i use a different address for my business
How to remove old business on Google Map
Change phone number on business profile
Primary sources used on this page
- Google: where Business Profile information comes from, and how the public can edit it — support.google.com
- Google: the documented rules on names, phone numbers and addresses — support.google.com
- Google: service areas — up to 20, no radius, up to 48 hours to apply — support.google.com
- Google: how long profile changes take to appear — support.google.com
- Whitespark 2026: where each NAP factor ranks among 187 — whitespark.ca
- BrightLocal: 62% of consumers avoid a business after finding incorrect information — www.brightlocal.com
Settle the record, then propagate it
Consistency work is only ever half a job. Fix the canonical details, then check the places that copy them — roughly in this order.
Read the guide: how to run a full local SEO audit, Local SEO Citations: What They Are and How to Build Them and Local SEO for Multiple Locations: How to Do It Right. Want it handled for you? See our Local SEO services.