A citation cleanup is the work of finding every online listing that shows your business’s contact details, correcting the wrong ones against one official record you keep, and stopping them from drifting back. Those details are the name, address and phone number, which gets shortened to NAP. A citation is any online listing that carries them. Start with the listings customers see first, because that’s where a wrong detail costs you something.
The stakes are plain. A customer who dials an old number may not reach you. Somebody who follows an old address may not find you. And when two listings for one business sit out there with different details, you don’t control what a customer sees when they look you up.
Listings live in places like Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp and Facebook, plus industry directories you may not remember signing up for. A duplicate is a second listing for the same business or location. Both problems can come from the same gap: nobody wrote down one correct version and held every listing to it.
What Does a Citation Cleanup Involve?
A citation is any online listing that shows a business’s name, address and phone number. A cleanup finds the listings carrying wrong or duplicate details, corrects them so they match one official record you keep, and stops them from drifting back out of line later on.
- Find. Track down the listings showing something other than your current details, duplicates included.
- Fix. Correct each one yourself, or ask the site to correct it.
- Keep. Update listings whenever the business changes, so the work holds.
Every part of this is about what a customer sees when they look you up.
Write One Master Record First
Before you can fix a listing, you have to know what it should say. So write it down in one place. It’s a working method, and the rest of the cleanup leans on it.
The record holds five things:
- The exact business name, spelled and punctuated one way.
- The address in one format, down to the suite number and the abbreviations you use.
- One main phone number.
- One website address, with or without the www, picked and kept.
- Your hours.
On the name, Google’s guidelines for representing your business put it this way: “Your name should reflect your business’s real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers.” That rule is written for a Business Profile, not for other listing sites. It’s still the right test for your record. Pick the name customers already use for you, and write it that way everywhere.
Decide which phone number is official before you touch anything. If calls come in on more than one line, choose the one you want printed on every listing and set the rest aside for internal use.
Then read your own site. The contact page and the footer should show what the record says. Correcting somebody else’s directory while your own website still prints the old number is working backwards.
How Do You Find the Wrong Listings?
You search for your own details the way a customer would, then look for the versions that don’t match. Put each phone number in quotation marks and search it. Do the same for old addresses and former names. Then check the map apps, review sites and social profiles your customers use.
The steps below are a working method.
- Search your current phone number with quotation marks around it. The quotation marks hold the digits together, so the results should be pages that print that number.
- Run the same search for every old phone number, every old address and any former business name. Stale listings can sit under the old details, which is why searching only the current ones misses them.
- Search your business name together with your city, then look past the first page of results. Older listings can sit further down.
- Look yourself up by name on the map apps, review sites and social profiles your customers use, rather than waiting for a search result to hand them to you.
- Log every listing you find: its web address, which details are wrong, whether it’s a duplicate, and whether you can edit it yourself.
That log is the work list. Everything from this point is working down it.
Which Wrong Listings Should You Fix First?
Fix what customers see first. That means wrong phone numbers and addresses on the listings people use to call you or drive to you. Duplicates come next, because a second listing splits what a customer finds. Rarely visited directories come last. They’re still wrong, and they can wait.
Wrong contact details on a listing customers use are the live problem. A wrong number can send a call nowhere. A wrong address can send somebody to a door that isn’t yours. Those get corrected before anything else, even on a listing that looks unimportant to you.
Duplicates are the second tier. Each listing collects its own reviews, so a duplicate can leave some of your reviews sitting on a listing you don’t control. Even when both copies show the right details, one listing is enough.
The directories nobody visits come last. A site with no traffic that still shows the number you stopped using is wrong, and it belongs on the log. It doesn’t belong at the top of it.
That order is our reading of what costs a customer soonest. It isn’t a rule from Google or from any listing site, and what you know about where your customers look should move things around.
Fix a Listing: Claim It, Edit It or Ask for a Correction
Three routes cover the work.
- Claim and edit. Where a listing site lets you claim the listing as the owner, claim it and edit the details to match your record.
- Ask for a correction. Where there’s no claim option, look for the site’s correction form or its contact option, and send the right details.
- Merge or remove. Where you’ve found a duplicate, use whatever merge or removal option that site offers.
Two general principles apply across sites. Some listing sites draw their details from other sources, so a correction you make in one place may not stick; if it reverts, the fix may need to happen where the information comes from. And a saved change may not show on the live listing at once, so keep a note of what you sent and when, then go back and look at the public listing yourself.
Keep the Cleanup From Unraveling
A cleanup holds until the business changes. Then it can come apart. Put a line at the top of the master record: if we move, rename or change a number, every listing on the log gets updated.
If a move is coming, it’s worth understanding what an address change does to local rankings before you edit anything.
Keep one more distinction straight. A citation is a listing carrying your name, address and phone number; a write-up in the press or a mention on a community or partner page is something else, and our post on how trusted local mentions differ from citations draws that line.
Should You Clean Up Listings Yourself or Hand It Off?
If you’ve got a few listings and no duplicates, do it yourself. A rename, a move, more than one location, duplicates you can’t claim, or no time for it all point the other way. Then hand it to someone who does this work.
What you’re handing off is the searching and the watching. Spilt Media’s citation management service includes a listing audit, correction of name, address and phone details and duplicate suppression, and the team will monitor your listings monthly. The searching ends. The watching doesn’t.
One thing to settle with anyone you hire. Google’s help page on local ranking says there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. Our reading: a cleanup controls whether the details a customer sees are correct, and it can’t buy a position in results. So a promised ranking outcome should get a hard question before you agree to anything.
Frequently Asked Questions About Citation Cleanup
What does NAP mean?
NAP stands for name, address and phone number. Those are the three details a listing has to get right for a customer to reach you or find you. Listings also carry a website address and your hours, and both of those should match your master record too.
Will a citation cleanup raise my rankings?
Nobody outside Google can promise that. Google’s own help documentation states that there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. What a cleanup does control is whether the details a customer sees are correct: the right number, the right address, one version of your name.
Do I need to fix listings on sites nobody visits?
Fix the ones customers see first. A rarely visited site that shows the phone number you stopped using is still wrong, so it goes on the later list rather than off the list. Wrong is wrong. It’s a question of order, not of whether it counts.
What if a listing site won’t let me change my details?
Look for a claim option or a correction form, send the right details, keep a note of what you sent and when, and move on to the next listing. Some sites draw their details from other sources, so the fix may have to happen at the source instead.
Should my website match my listings?
Yes. Your contact page and your footer should show the same name, address and phone number as the master record. If your own site disagrees with the record, settle that first, then go correct the listings that other people control.
Want a Second Opinion on Your Listings?
If you’re not sure what’s sitting out there under your name, a conversation is a reasonable place to start. When you’re ready, book a consultation with Spilt Media.