Your name, address, and phone have to match.

NAP is the name, the address, and the phone. Add the website and people call it NAP+W. Google, Apple, Yelp, Facebook, and your own site each keep a copy. If those copies disagree, you look unfinished, and a customer who calls the old number never becomes a lead.

The mismatches are boring and expensive. “Valley Drain Co.” on the truck and “Best Drain Las Vegas” on Facebook. A suite number on one listing and not the other. A cell phone on Instagram and a landline you canceled in 2022 still sitting on Google. An address you moved out of that still ranks.

The short version

• Use the name on the truck, the invoice, and the site. Google’s guidelines say not to stuff the city or a slogan into the name.
• “Street” versus “St” is usually the same address. An old address, a missing suite in a shared building, or a mailbox dressed up as a shop is not.
• One phone, the one that rings at the business. Don’t publish a tracking number as the main number on a directory.
• If customers never visit, hide the address and list the area. I wrote that separately because it is the mistake that gets listings suspended.

What Google actually asks for

The name should be the real-world name, the one on the sign, the stationery, and the way customers already say it. Extra words, a city, or “best cheap plumber,” go in the description or the services. Not in the name. That is in Google’s representation guidelines.

The address has to be a place you can actually represent. P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes are not eligible. A suite or floor belongs in the address when several businesses share the building. If nobody is served there, you are a service-area business and the address stays hidden. The public version is the cities you drive to. That setup is its own post.

The phone has to connect to that location. Google prefers a local number over a call-center line, and it tells you not to publish a number or a URL that redirects people somewhere else. Extra numbers are allowed. A different main number on every site is not.

What is worth fixing

Pick one public version and repeat the facts, not the decoration. Same business. Same phone. Same address, if customers can be served there. Write it down before you start opening tabs. That page is the source. Everything else gets edited to match it.

Where to walk it

1. Your site footer and contact page. If the site is wrong, every other fix is a guess.
2. Google Business Profile. One profile per real location.
3. Apple Maps and Bing.
4. Facebook and Instagram. The bio phone is the one people tap.
5. Yelp, the BBB, and the directory you forgot you joined in 2022.

Fix the phone first. A wrong number is not a branding issue. It is missed work. Then the address. Then the name, if you stuffed a city into it or left an old LLC line that isn’t how anyone knows you.

This is also why I care about the listing more than a new logo when someone says they are invisible. The longer version is why a Las Vegas business isn’t showing up. If you want the profile brought into one story, that is Google Setup, starting at $750 for one location. I don’t promise the map will put you first. I make the listing tell one version of the truth.

Questions I get

Does every punctuation difference hurt me?

No. “Street” and “St.” are the same address. An old street, a dead phone, and two names for one business are the ones that cost you the call.

Should I hide my home address?

If customers don’t come there, yes. Google still needs an address to verify you. Customers should see the area you serve, not your front door.

Can I use a different number to track ads?

Not as the main number on the listing. The primary number has to ring at the business. A tracking number that replaces it on Google, Yelp, and the site is how the copies drift apart.

Sources

• Guidelines for representing your business on Google