NAP and citations: web mentions of a business's name, address and phone number.
NAP abbreviates name, address and phone number; a citation is any mention of that NAP data on another website — directories, aggregators, review platforms. Consistent citations corroborate a business's identity and location, supporting the prominence component of local search ranking factors.
Definition
Search engines assemble local knowledge from many sources. When the same name, address and phone number appear 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. Citation work is therefore mostly hygiene: fix the canonical NAP once, then propagate and maintain it.
Usage
Practitioners distinguish structured citations (directory listings with fixed NAP fields) from unstructured ones (mentions in articles or blog posts). "Citation building" is the deliberate creation of structured citations; "citation cleanup" is the correction of inconsistent ones. Both are levers in local SEO, not measurements.
Why it matters
Citations influence what a tracker measures without being the measurement. Teams fix citation inconsistency, then watch geo-grid scans from tools such as LocalRank (localrank.so) to see whether visibility responds. Citation services are also where broader suites differ from focused trackers — a distinction tabulated on the comparison page.
Return to the site home.
Related terms
Local pack · Review signals · Rank tracking · 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.
What is the difference between structured and unstructured citations?
Structured citations are directory listings with fixed NAP fields; unstructured citations are NAP mentions inside general web content.
Cite this entry
Local SEO Glossary. "NAP and citations." Local SEO Glossary, https://local-seo-glossary.pages.dev/ (accessed 2026).