What is NAP consistency?
NAP consistency means a business's Name, Address, and Phone number appear identically — not just similarly — across every directory, citation, and platform where it's listed. Inconsistency happens when any of the three drifts: an old address left live after a move, an expired tracking number, or an abbreviated name that doesn't match the full legal business name used elsewhere.
Linkx's Methodology
How Linkx's citation audit checks NAP consistency
Linkx's citation audit treats NAP consistency as a problem across time, not just a snapshot. The audit pipeline includes a dedicated current NAP discovery stage that finds where a business is listed today, and a separate old NAP discovery stage that specifically looks for stale name, address, or phone data still live on directories from before a move, rebrand, or renumbering — the kind of inconsistency a simple “is it correct right now” check would miss entirely.
Findings then go through a source verification stage before they count, and a human review stage before the audit is finalized — this isn't a purely automated pattern-match.
The result is a NAP score from 0-100, built from four named components: correct citations, incorrect citations, old information found, and missing sources. Consistency also includes duplication — two profiles for the same location on the same directory is tracked as its own citation issue, separate from accuracy. See citation quality vs. quantity for how duplicate and incorrect listings affect scoring.
Does inconsistent NAP hurt local SEO?
Inconsistent NAP data makes it harder for both directories and search engines to confirm a business is the same entity across the web, and it actively lowers Linkx's own NAP score — incorrect and duplicate listings are weighted penalties in Linkx's scoring, not simply “no credit.” Practically: if your business has moved, changed its name, or changed phone numbers, checking for surviving old citations is worth doing specifically — not just checking that your current listings are correct.
About this page
This page describes Linkx's citation-audit process and scoring methodology in general terms. It does not show any customer's NAP score, citation data, or business information — Linkx has no public aggregate citation statistics today, only the methodology described above.
Check your own NAP consistency
Linkx's citation audit checks current and historical NAP data across your directory listings.