Entity resolution — The process by which a system decides that all the scattered references to a business across the web are the same single thing.
Why it decides everything else
Before a model can recommend you, it has to be confident you are one thing. That confidence is assembled from agreement across sources: name, address, phone, category, hours, service area, the people attached to the business. Every disagreement is a small subtraction from confidence — and a business a system cannot resolve confidently is a business it will not name.
An old address on three directories is not just untidy. It is a reason to hedge, and hedging means naming someone else.
In practice
Pick one canonical string for every field and enforce it everywhere — including the punctuation, the abbreviations, and the suite number. Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, the chamber, the licensing board, every directory you can find.
This is unglamorous, and it is the highest-leverage work available to most local businesses, because almost nobody does it completely. It also shows up faster than anything else: weeks, not quarters.
Related: GEO, why the best business usually is not the one recommended.