AI search and working with a developer
What is NAP consistency?
NAP consistency means your business name, address and phone number appear identically everywhere — website, business profile, directories, invoices, social accounts. Inconsistency forces a search engine to decide whether these are one business or several.
Also called: name address phone · citation consistency
What counts as an inconsistency
- "Ltd" in one place and "Limited" in another
- Two phone numbers, one from an old listing nobody updated
- Address formatted differently, or with a suite number missing
- A trading name in some places and a legal name in others, with nothing connecting them
How to fix it permanently
Keep the canonical details in exactly one place and copy from there. On a well-built site every appearance of the name, phone and address is generated from a single configuration value, so they cannot drift apart.
The audit worth doing once
Search your business name and phone number and list every place they appear. Most businesses find at least one stale directory listing with an old number, and it has been quietly contradicting them for years.
Where this is covered in depth
A definition can only go so far. Local SEO when customers do not come to your address covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.
Who wrote this
Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.