Skip to main content
Nexora Web Design
SEO

What is Citation?

A mention of your business name, address, and phone number (NAP) on a third-party website — directory, review site, or industry listing.

Also known as: local citation, directory listing

A local citation is any web mention of your business's NAP (Name, Address, Phone). Some include a link back to your site; some don't. Google uses citations as a verification signal — the more places your NAP appears consistently, the more confident Google is that your business is real and located where you say it is.

The most important citations are the major directories (Yelp, BBB, Yellow Pages, Angi, Houzz, Apple Maps, Bing Places) plus industry-specific ones (HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack for trades, Healthgrades and Zocdoc for healthcare, Avvo for law).

Citation consistency matters more than citation volume. 30 perfectly-consistent citations beat 300 inconsistent ones. Tools like BrightLocal, Whitespark, and Moz Local can audit your existing citations and flag mismatches.

Why it matters

Inconsistent citations are the most common reason local businesses underperform in 3-pack rankings despite doing everything else right.

Related

More SEO terms

Local SEO

The practice of optimizing a website + Google Business Profile to rank for geographically-tied searches like '[service] near me' or '[service] [city].'

Local Pack

The three business listings Google displays above the normal organic results for local searches, with a map. The most-clicked real estate in local search.

Schema Markup

A vocabulary of structured data tags that tell Google what each piece of content on your page means — improving rich-result eligibility and AI citability.

Google Business Profile

Your free Google-hosted listing showing your business name, hours, photos, reviews, and map location. The single biggest local-pack ranking input.

Want a free audit of your site against these standards?

Senior strategist review, prioritized fix list, written diagnostic. Free.

Request a free audit