Definition:
NAP is the set of details comprising a business’s name, address and phone number. The initials stand for Name, Address and Phone. It is used in local SEO to identify a business and maintain consistent contact information across its website, profiles and directories.
Consistency means that the details refer to the same business or location and are up to date. It does not require every platform to reproduce exactly the same spacing, abbreviations or formatting.
Elements of NAP
The three components make it possible to recognise the business, locate it when it serves customers at a physical establishment and contact it:
- Business name: should reflect the real name under which the business presents itself and is known to its customers. In Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, services, cities or promotional claims should not be added solely to improve rankings. These elements can form part of the name when they genuinely belong to it, rather than being advertising additions.
- Business address: should identify the correct location, with the necessary details, such as street, number, town or city and postcode. The information should correspond to that particular establishment, not another branch. Businesses that travel to their customers and do not serve them at their own address must hide that address in Google Business Profile and specify their service area.
- Business phone number: should allow customers to contact the business and be under its control. It can be a landline or mobile number; there is no general requirement to use a landline. The international dialling code, such as +34 for Spain, can make calls from other countries easier and does not turn the number into a different contact.
Google’s guidelines for representing a business establish the requirements for the name, address and phone number in its profiles. NAP consistency does not justify publishing an address that should remain hidden or adding unnecessary information to the name.
Importance of NAP
Accurate details help customers find the right establishment and avoid calls to old numbers or trips to incorrect addresses. They also help mapping services, directories and search engines associate the information with the relevant business.
NAP can appear in Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp, Yellow Pages and other services. A business does not automatically need to be present in all of them: the usefulness of each listing depends on the business, market and service.
Maintaining these details is part of local SEO work, but it does not guarantee a particular position. Google explains local rankings through factors such as relevance, distance and prominence; matching NAP details does not replace the rest of the business information.
Common errors in NAP implementation
Common errors include retaining phone numbers that no longer work, keeping an address after a move, mixing details from different branches or leaving duplicate profiles with contradictory information. Artificially changing the name to incorporate keywords is also incorrect.
A difference in formatting does not necessarily amount to a contradiction. Writing out street or its abbreviation, or displaying the same phone number with spaces and an international dialling code, does not in itself identify a different business or demonstrate a crawling problem for search engines.
When the actual details change, the website and relevant listings should be updated. For businesses with several establishments, the review should be carried out by location, maintaining the details that correspond to each one.