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NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone number. Consistent NAP data across directories, Google Business Profile and your website tells search engines that your business is legitimate and trustworthy. Inconsistent listings (e.g. 'St' vs 'Street', or different phone formats) confuse search engines and suppress your visibility in local pack results.
At minimum, your business should be listed consistently in the top 10–15 Australian directories: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp, True Local, Yellow Pages, White Pages, Hotfrog, StartLocal, Localsearch, Whereis, Foursquare, Cylex and your industry-specific directories. Quantity matters less than consistency — 20 accurate listings beat 100 inconsistent ones.
The most common issues are: abbreviations (St vs Street, Rd vs Road), varying business name formats (trading name vs registered name), outdated phone numbers or addresses after a move, missing area code prefixes, and different postal/state formats. Even small discrepancies send mixed signals to Google's local algorithm.
Most directory updates take 2–8 weeks to be crawled and re-indexed. Google Business Profile changes typically reflect within 1–2 weeks. For a full local SEO recovery after widespread NAP fixes, allow 2–3 months. Track your local pack impressions in Google Search Console to measure progress.