Major Problems with Incorrect NAP Data for Local Businesses

[Linda Buquet]

Interesting follow-up story about how inaccurate local business NAP data is across the web, written by Andrew Shotland over at Search Engine Land.

The Most Common Problems With Local Business Listings

In the December 2012 YQ Survey, we found that consumers regularly encounter incorrect location data for businesses. It’s clearly a big problem, not only for consumers, but also for marketers.

Across 40,000 Yext customer listings, 43% had at least one incorrect or missing address on the 50+ local directory sites in Yext’s network. Approximately 37% had at least one incorrect or missing name on a listing.

When we looked at the numbers by business category; we noticed the following trends across Yext’s top customer categories: Insurance Agents and Real Estate Agents were the most likely types of businesses to have missing listings in Yext’s network.

Narly NAP issues out in the wild wild west!

 

[sergiuliano]

What I would be curious to know is if Google needs NAP all the times or if NA or NP, or AP is enough also for building authority.

I have seen some sites building citations without using 3 factors and still ranking on top for local searches.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Great article. I'm not surprised that the insurance industry is at the top of some of those charts for missing or erroneous NAP data. I speak from experience, it's messy out there.

 

[Jo Shaer]

I am smiling wryly because a client today has about four different versions of his shopping mall address, which occurred because they put a roof on the place - even the landlord has the postcode wrong!