Keep your name, address, phone and hours the same everywhere

If you have a shop, an office or a service area, your basic facts live in many places. When they disagree, a person sees confusion and a machine has to guess. This guide is a one-hour tidy-up.

The short answer

Pick one correct version of your name, address, phone number, website and opening hours. Compare it, place by place, with your website, your Google Business Profile, your Apple Business listing (formerly Apple Business Connect), your Bing Places listing and the directories that matter in your trade. Fix every difference. Then add LocalBusiness markup to your site that repeats the same facts.

Google tells site owners who care about AI search features to keep their Business Profile information up to date, so this is worth doing. It is not a promise that anyone will be recommended.

Step 1: write down the master version

Open a note and fill in five lines. Decide each one carefully, because every other place will be copied from it.

• Name: the name on your shop sign and your invoices. Google's guidelines say your business name should reflect its real-world name. They do not allow taglines, phone numbers, URLs, opening hours or promotional wording in the name.
• Address: the full street address, written the same way each time. Google does not accept P.O. boxes or virtual offices for a profile.
• Phone: one number, with the country code, that belongs to this business. Google says the phone number and website should connect to the individual location, and to use a local number rather than a central call centre whenever possible.
• Website: the exact address of your home page, with the same https and www choice you use everywhere.
• Hours: your regular, customer-facing hours. Google says to use regular hours and set special hours for holidays or events.

If you serve customers at their homes and do not welcome visitors, Google's guidelines have a different rule for service-area businesses: hide your business address from customers.

Step 2: audit each place

Make a table with one row per place and one column per fact. Tick or write what you see.

Look for small differences that are easy to miss: "Street" and "St.", an old phone number, a Sunday you no longer open, a suite number, a website address that redirects.

Step 3: fix each place

Your own website. Change the footer, the Contact page and the page title if needed. The website is the place you control completely, so fix it first.

Google Business Profile. Sign in, open the profile and edit the details. Keep one profile per location. Check the categories too: Google says to choose the fewest that describe your core business, as specific as possible.

Apple. Apple says Apple Business Connect is now Apple Business, so older articles may use the old name. Its help describes signing in, then adding a new location or searching for an existing one on Maps. You enter the phone number, website and hours as you set it up. Apple verifies your organisation, and for a location already on Maps you can verify by phone: Apple calls the number it has on record and you enter a four-digit code. Apple has a separate help page for editing a location later.

Bing. Sign in to your Bing Places account and edit the listing so each fact matches your master note. We could not open Bing's help pages today, so follow the steps its dashboard shows.

Directories. Search for your business name and your phone number. For each directory that shows you, find its "claim" or "suggest an edit" link and send the master facts.

Keep a note of the date each change was sent. Listings may update at different speeds.

Step 4: add LocalBusiness markup

Google asks for a LocalBusiness type, the most specific one that fits (for example Restaurant or DaySpa). Its required properties are name and address. It recommends telephone with the country and area code, a working url, geo, and openingHoursSpecification.

A template for a made-up shop:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "HomeGoodsStore",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#shop",
  "name": "Harbour Lane Candles",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "telephone": "+44-117-555-0100",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "12 Quay Street",
    "addressLocality": "Bristol",
    "postalCode": "BS1 0AA",
    "addressCountry": "GB"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "17:30"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
      "opens": "10:00",
      "closes": "16:00"
    }
  ]
}
</script>

A few rules from Google's page:

• Leave out validFrom and validThrough and the hours apply all year.
• A closed day uses 00:00 for both opening and closing time.
• Hours that run past midnight go in one block.
• Use geo only with latitude and longitude to at least five decimal places, if you add it.

The markup must say what the page says. If your page shows Saturday hours of 10:00 to 16:00, the markup says the same.

Step 5: set a calendar reminder

Facts drift. Put a reminder in your calendar for every three months, and one before each holiday season. At each reminder, repeat Step 2 on the three places that matter most: your site, Google and Apple. See one source of truth for your facts for a sheet that tracks this.

How to check it worked

1. Search your business name on Google, on Apple Maps and on Bing. Compare what you see with your master note.
2. Call the number shown in each place. It should reach you.
3. Check the website address shown in each place. It should open your home page without a long chain of redirects.
4. Validate the markup with the Rich Results Test or run our schema check.
5. Two weeks later, repeat the searches. Write down what has changed.

What this won't do

• It will not make an AI assistant recommend you. It removes one reason for an assistant to repeat a wrong fact.
• It will not instantly update other sites. Each one has its own pace and its own review.
• It will not fix wrong facts on a page you do not control. The fix what AI gets wrong guide covers asking for a correction.
• It will not replace reviews, photos and a good reputation, which matter to a customer choosing a business.