NAP consistency how critical is critical?

[Blaine]

When it comes to NAP consistency I know that having exact consistency across the name - address- and phone number is important. But how important is it? Some citation and directory platforms don't allow us to abbreviate the state. Instead of the two letter code they have the entire name of the state spelled out. There's really nothing we can do about situations like that but...

What about when it come to Suite or #?

For example

123 Anywhere St, #6
Yourcity, AZ 50235

As opposed to

123 Anywhere St, Suite 6
Yourcity, AZ 50235

Or say a particular citation has a space between the # sign and the 6?

123 Anywhere St, # 6
Yourcity, AZ 50235

Or even has the word suite spelled out instead of the abreviation?

123 Anywhere St, Suite 6
Yourcity, AZ 50235

In the past I know that google stated a preference for the #6 version of this address. My question is has this changed?

I ask because I haven't on boarded a new client in a couple of years and have recently taken one on with some citation issues. Having never understood the NAP consistency thing he was letting different employees set them up, then had a few different agencies handle if for him that apparently never explained much to him and were just concerned with taking his cash and showing him snazzy reports.

 

[whitespark]

Hey Blaine,

google normalizes addresses. All of those variations will “normalize” to the same address, so those variations are of no concern.

see this post for more info:Whitespark's List of A-OK NAP Variations for Google Maps & Bing

 

[Blaine]

Thanks Whitespark!

 

[Jim Froling]

Before you burn a bunch of time or worry about NAP consistency, you may want to read David Mihm's recent blog post. First blog post for David in a year so don't miss it.

 

[Eoghan_Aircam]

NAP consistency across long tail matters less and less these days. Focus on making sure you're singing off the same hymn sheet on Google, website, Apple Maps, Yelp and only a few other high authority domains for your client's vertical (e.g. hotel = trip advisor, auto = cars.com). Paying for looooong tail distribution just to get your citation # up won't meaningfully impact your ranking or more importantly, the traffic your client sees from their listings program.