NAP Consistency AEO: Why Uniform Business Information is the Foundation of Local AI Citations
NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone - the three core pieces of information about a local business. NAP consistency means that your business information is identical across Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, your website, and all other platforms. When these don't match (even small differences like 'St.' vs 'Street'), AI systems can't reliably identify your business as one entity.
AI systems that answer local queries (nearest, best, most highly rated, open now) aggregate entity data from Google Business Profile, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, and dozens of industry directories. When this data conflicts - even minor formatting differences - the AI cannot confidently resolve the entity and defaults to excluding it from recommendation answers. NAP consistency is the prerequisite that unlocks all other local AEO investments.
For the full local AEO context, see Local AEO Basics and GBP Q&A Optimization.
NAP Consistency Audit Simulator
Enter your canonical business NAP below. The simulator shows which platforms might have inconsistencies - and what a real inconsistency audit would uncover.
NAP Formatting Standards: Every Field Matters
The most common source of NAP inconsistencies is formatting variation - not factual changes. AI entity resolution algorithms are sensitive to character-level differences. Click each field to see the correct vs incorrect formats.
Correct
Acme Dental Chicago
Incorrect variants
Acme Dental / AcmeDental
Use exact legal business name. No variants - even 'and' vs '&' creates a mismatch.
LocalBusiness Schema: The Canonical NAP Source
Your website's LocalBusiness schema functions as the authoritative NAP definition - the canonical source that AI systems reference when platform data conflicts. Every property must match your canonical NAP exactly. Key properties: name (exact legal business name), streetAddress + addressLocality + addressRegion + postalCode (in a PostalAddress entity), telephone (with consistent formatting including or excluding country code), openingHoursSpecification (hours of operation in ISO 8601 format), and geo (GeoCoordinates with latitude and longitude for GPS-verified location signals). Additionally, add the sameAs property with URLs to your GBP, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, and other official platform presences - this creates a machine-readable entity disambiguation network that helps AI systems confirm all listings refer to the same business entity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Topic Mindmap
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