Hotel NAP & Citations Question

[Marcus]

Hi all,

Firstly apologies if this is in the wrong forum.

So my question is about NAP consistency for hotels.

So Moz/Whitespark list online travel agents such as expedia and hotels.com as significant citations, on top of this I assume others such as booking.com are also a significant citation.

But as these online travel agents use their own phone number, this gives an obvious inconsistency to the NAP. And can even mean that one listing (or one hotel in this case) is represented with a range of different telephone numbers.

I'm sure this problem exists in other areas, but what can be done about it, if anything?

Or is it just not worth worrying about?

Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Marcus,

Moved your thread to the citations forum because Darren from Whitespark and other citation pros check this forum. But most pros are not around much on the weekend, so may be Monday before you get some feedback.

 

[Marcus]

Thanks Linda.

No takers then I guess?

 

[mborgelt]

I was waiting for one of the citation pros to jump in but we don't really focus too much on secondary or tertiary citations until we can't move the meter doing basic things. That said I wouldn't worry about that stuff unless you've got on-site, links and other things in place and rankings still aren't moving.

 

[CodyBaird]

Marcus, I don't fully understand your question. I also have limited experience with hotels. Are you saying that you can't control the phone number on some citation sources? If so, which?

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

 

[Marcus]

Hi Cody,

Exactly, so take for example hotels.com they use their own number:



Marcus

 

[whitespark]

Hi Marcus,

My thinking is that there are 2 cases here.

1) The sites may use Javascript to swap out the main number for the call tracking number after page load, in which case, Google would see the main number, not the tracking number.

2) If the sites are not doing that, then this consistency problem applies to all businesses within this category, so it's a level playing field. Everyone is breaking even on this consistency issue.

Either way, I don't think it's anything to worry about.

Hope this helps.