NAP consistency — your business name, address and phone number appearing identically everywhere they appear.
Why it is a citation signal, not a branding preference
Any system deciding that a scattered set of references all describe the same business is comparing records. Matching records raise confidence. Contradicting records lower it. Two addresses, three phone numbers and a name that is sometimes “Co.” and sometimes “Company” do not read as one business with untidy admin — they read as an unresolved question.
What nobody can prove
No published study measures the effect of NAP consistency on local ranking or on inclusion in AI answers. The figures agencies quote come from surveys of practitioner opinion, not from measured outcomes — the best-known of them polls 47 practitioners and states outright that none of them have access to the algorithm.
Google’s own documentation names relevance, distance and prominence as what drives local results. NAP consistency is not on that list. It is worth separating from the genuinely documented advice, which is about completeness within your Business Profile, not consistency across the web.
We still do the work, because entity resolution is a confidence problem and contradictions cost confidence. We just decline to attach a number to it.
Sources: Google Business Profile Help, improve your local ranking · Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors, an opinion survey.
Related: entity resolution, Google Business Profile, local pack.