The name, address and phone have to match everywhere

NAP is a consultant’s acronym for three words you already know: name, address, phone. The idea is not mysterious. If the Google listing says “Marie’s, 12 Market Street, 04 72…” and the website says “Marie Bakery, 12 Mkt St, +33 6…”, Google compares. So does a customer.

For a hundred-store chain, that is a project. For you, it is an afternoon, once, then a check when something changes.

Screenshot pending: local-seo

Run pnpm screens with the app's local stack up to capture it. The Google listing in Artifluence, with the name, address and phone.

Why Google cares

Local ranking leans on relevance. A listing whose details do not match what other pages say about you is a less trustworthy listing. The representation guidelines ask that the name and address be the real-world ones — signage, letterhead, what customers know.

Google does not publish a “NAP score”. People who sell presence tools invent one. We do not have one. What we know is the simple case: two versions, and someone dials the wrong number.

Where to write it, for a shop, not a head office

Not fifty directories. The places a person on your street actually looks:

1. The Google listing.
2. The Facebook page.
3. The Instagram account — the city in the bio, the link, the contact button.
4. Your website, if it exists: the footer, the contact page, and ideally the same words as the shopfront.
5. One directory people in your line of business still use. In France that is often PagesJaunes or the trades register equivalent. One, not twelve.

The name: the shopfront’s. “Martin Bakery”, not “Martin Bakery — organic bread 3rd arrondissement”. The address: written the same way, including “Street” or “St”. The phone: one, professional, the same everywhere. If you have a mobile for emergencies, that is not the listing number.

What breaks NAP without anyone noticing

• A new phone plan and the number changes. The listing keeps the old one.
• A move two doors down the same street. Customers still find the old door.
• A Facebook page a intern made with the English trading name.
• A generated website that picked up the host’s registered address.
• Hours that differ on Google and Instagram. That is not NAP in the strict sense, but it is the same lie.

What you do this month

Open the five places. Copy the name, address and phone from the Google listing — if the listing is right — onto the others. Do not “rephrase” them so they sound better.

When something changes, you change all five the same day. Artifluence keeps the Google listing and can publish to the four networks; it does not rewrite PagesJaunes on its own. That is still you, once a year if you are stable.

If you want to see first whether the listing itself is consistent, the free report reads what is already public. It does not fix anything. The fix is the afternoon.

Sources

1. Guidelines for representing your business on Google (accessed 7 September 2026)
2. Tips to improve your local ranking on Google (accessed 7 September 2026)

All posts