Local directory & citations
Same details. Everywhere
Local search rewards businesses listed identically across the web. Here’s every directory that still moves the needle
Why citations matter
Same details, everywhere, always
A citation is any online mention of your business name, address, and phone number — your NAP. When those details match across every directory, search engines trust your data and rank you higher in local results.
When they don't match, doubt creeps in — and doubt costs you rankings, clicks, and customers. Consistency is the whole game.
NAPName, Address, Phone — the three details that must stay identical everywhere online.
TrustConsistent citations are a recognized local ranking signal and drive real referral traffic.
The cheat sheet
Where your business needs to be listed
Work top to bottom. Nail the essentials and data aggregators first — they feed the rest of the web — then layer in review, general, social, and industry directories
The essentials
Claim and optimize these first — they carry the most weight in local search.
Do these first
Data aggregators — the three that matter
These are the source. They syndicate your data to hundreds of downstream sites, apps and voice assistants — so fixing a directory while the aggregator still holds the old record just means it repopulates.
Naming matters here: Localeze and Neustar are the same company, now TransUnion Digital Business Profile. Factual merged into Foursquare in 2020, and Acxiom retired its directory products at the end of 2019. Any cheat sheet still listing four or five aggregators is out of date.
Reviews & trust
Where customers vet you — reviews here shape your reputation and rankings.
General directories
The broad, high-authority directories worth a consistent listing.
Social profiles
Complete, consistent profiles double as citations and brand touchpoints.
Industry-specific
The niche directories your customers actually use — pick yours.
NAP consistency rules
Get these right on every single listing
A directory only helps if the details are perfect
Use the exact business nameMatch it letter for letter — no added keywords or location tags.
Format the address identicallyPick one format for "Suite," "St," and abbreviations, and stick to it.
Use one local phone numberA consistent local number everywhere — avoid call-tracking swaps on citations.
Point to the same websiteUse one canonical URL across every profile and directory.
Choose accurate categoriesPick the categories that truly match what you do — not everything.
Keep hours currentUpdate regular, holiday, and special hours as they change.
Add photos and a descriptionComplete every field — full profiles outperform bare ones.
Claim, don't duplicateClaim existing listings instead of creating a second, conflicting one.
Volume is the wrong metric. Accuracy is the metric.
Five hundred listings with three versions of your phone number is worse than fifty that agree
Order of operations
Do it in this sequence or you'll do it twice
Most citation work fails not because the wrong sites were chosen, but because they were done in the wrong order
1
Audit before you touch anything
Find every record that already exists — including the ones created by a previous owner, an old address or an aggregator you've never heard of. You cannot fix what you haven't found.
2
Suppress duplicates first
Before creating anything new. Suppress rather than delete where the platform allows it — a deleted record can be recreated from an aggregator feed, a suppressed one stays down.
3
Correct the aggregators
Data Axle, TransUnion Digital Business Profile and Foursquare. These feed the downstream ecosystem, so correcting them stops bad data regenerating behind you.
4
Then the majors, then the niche
Google, Bing, Apple, Yelp and Facebook, then the directories your specific customers actually use. A dentist needs Healthgrades far more than Hotfrog.
5
Then maintain it
Listings drift. Aggregators refresh, users suggest edits, and platforms add fields. Consistency decays without someone watching it.
Working from home, or serving customers at their location?
Register as a service area business and hide the street address while still setting your service radius. Publishing a home address and then trying to suppress it everywhere is the more common and far more painful mistake — some directories will keep displaying it long after you've changed it at the source, and there's no clean way to unpublish an address that's already syndicated.
Avoid these
The mistakes that quietly sink rankings
Most local visibility problems trace back to a handful of citation errors
Duplicate listings
Two or more listings for the same location split your authority and confuse search engines.
Inconsistent NAP
Slight differences in name, address, or phone across sites erode trust in your data.
Unclaimed listings
Profiles you never claimed may hold old, wrong info you can't control.
Wrong categories
Vague or incorrect categories keep you out of the searches that matter.
Skipping aggregators
Ignore the data aggregators and bad info keeps repopulating across the web.
Set and forget
Listings drift out of date. Without upkeep, your consistency slowly decays.
Rather not do it yourself
We'll handle the whole list for you
Working through fifty directories by hand is a slog
Citation audit
We scan the web to find every listing and score your NAP consistency.
Duplicate cleanup
We hunt down and resolve duplicate and conflicting listings.
Citation building
We claim and build accurate listings across the directories that matter.
Ongoing consistency
We keep everything current as your business details change.
Good questions
Citations, answered
Want to know how your listings stack up? Ask us for a free citation audit — nothing to lose.
What is a citation
Any online mention of your business name, address and phone number — whether or not it links to your site. Search engines cross-reference those mentions to decide how confident they are about your details, which feeds directly into local ranking.
How many citations do we actually need
Fewer than most packages sell. Accuracy on the important ones beats volume on hundreds of low-quality directories. Get the primary aggregators, the major platforms and your industry directories right, and the long tail largely takes care of itself.
Which data aggregators still matter
Three in the US: Data Axle, TransUnion Digital Business Profile (formerly Neustar Localeze), and Foursquare (which absorbed Factual in 2020). Acxiom retired its directory products at the end of 2019 — so any list still naming four aggregators is out of date.
Why fix the aggregators before the directories
Because they're the source. Aggregators feed data to hundreds of downstream sites, so correcting a directory by hand while the aggregator still holds the old record means the wrong information simply repopulates a few weeks later.
We work from home or visit customers. What about the address
Register as a service area business and hide the street address while still setting your service area. Publishing a home address you then have to suppress everywhere is the more common and more painful mistake — and some directories will keep displaying it long after you change it.
Should we use a call tracking number on citations
Not as the primary number. Different numbers across directories are exactly the inconsistency that erodes confidence in your data. If you need call tracking, use it as a secondary number where the platform allows it — keeping the main line identical everywhere.
How do we handle duplicate listings
Suppress rather than delete where the platform allows it — a deleted record can be recreated by an aggregator feed, while a suppressed one stays down. Duplicates usually come from an old address, a previous owner or a franchise rollout, and they split reviews and ranking signals between records.
How long do citation corrections take to show up
Days on the platforms you edit directly, and weeks to a few months through the aggregator chain — each downstream publisher refreshes on its own schedule. Anyone promising the whole ecosystem corrected in a week doesn't control that chain.
Do citations still matter now that AI answers questions
More than before. AI assistants and AI overviews read the same publisher records, so an inconsistent address no longer just confuses a human scrolling a directory — it becomes a confidently wrong answer delivered to someone who never sees the source.
Free citation audit
See exactly where your listings stand
We'll scan the web for your business, score your NAP consistency, and show you which listings to claim, fix, or clean up first — with nothing to lose.