What is a local citation?

A citation repeats a business’s NAP (name, address and phone number) somewhere other than its own site and profile. Practitioners sort citations into two kinds. A structured citation sits in the fields of a directory or listing platform. An unstructured citation appears in running text, such as a news story or blog post.

Listing data also moves in bulk: practitioners call a company that compiles business listings and licenses them to other platforms a data aggregator. Google names licensed third-party data as one source for Business Profiles, alongside public information such as web pages it crawls, contributions from users and owners, and its own interactions with a place^[1]. Its guidelines add that it decides how to show a business’s address from both the owner’s details and information from other sources^[3].

Google documents three reasons they are relevant:

• It compiles profile information partly from crawled web content and licensed third-party data, so what other sites say about a business can reach its profile^[1].
• It asks for a business name that matches how the business is known in the real world, as used on its storefront, website and stationery^[3].
• It says complete, accurate business information makes a profile more likely to appear in local results^[2].

What Google does not document is a direct ranking effect. Its local ranking page says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity” and bases prominence on details such as how many websites link to a business and how many reviews it has; it does not mention citations^[2]. The idea that citation count or consistency moves rankings by itself is a practitioner belief.

A manual check needs only Google Search. Search for the business’s phone number inside quotation marks, which Google’s search help describes as the way to find an exact match^[6], and for the business name with its city. Compare each listing’s name, address and phone number with the Business Profile and the business’s website, and correct the ones that disagree. Google’s guidelines are the reference for the details: they rule out P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes as addresses and require a phone number under the business’s direct control^[3].

• Myth: Google names citations as a local ranking factor. Its local ranking page does not mention them^[2].
• Myth: a listing service can get Google to rank a business higher. Google says a better local ranking cannot be bought or requested^[2].
• Myth: any address works if it is consistent everywhere. Google rejects P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes, treats a rented mailing address the business does not operate from as ineligible, and tells service-area businesses to hide their address^[3].

Google’s wording on the subject has changed. Archived copies of its “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google” page show that until at least June 2025 it said prominence drew on information about a business “from across the web, like links, articles, and directories”^[4]. By mid-July 2025 the page had been rewritten to sum up local ranking as relevance, distance and popularity, with links and reviews as the named inputs^[5].