How to Do a Local Citation Audit: Find, Record and Score Every Listing

Online SEO Consultant

Quick answer: A local citation audit is an inventory of every place your business details already appear online. Write down your correct details, search for your business by name, phone number and old addresses, record each listing in a spreadsheet, mark what is wrong, and score each problem by how visible and how serious it is. The result is a prioritised list of fixes and gaps, which you then act on.

Most businesses already have more listings than they realise. Some were created by data providers, some by former staff, some years ago at an old address. An audit finds them before you add anything new, so you don't build on top of a mess. Fixing what you find is covered in our citation cleanup guide; this article is about the discovery and assessment stage.

What You Need Before You Start

  • Your master business name, address, phone number and website, written exactly. Our guides to business names, address formatting and phone numbers help you settle these.
  • A list of old names, previous addresses and former phone numbers.
  • A spreadsheet with the columns shown below.
  • Any logins you already have for directories.

Step 1: Search Methodically

Run each search and note every listing you find. Use quotation marks so the search engine looks for the exact phrase.

Search list (replace with your own details)

  • "Your Business Name" + town
  • "01234 567890" and "01234567890" (with and without the space)
  • Each previous phone number
  • "Old Street Address" + your business name
  • Your business name on Google Maps, Bing Maps and Apple Maps directly
  • Your name inside the major directories' own search boxes
  • Your trade association or accreditation register

Searching inside directories matters because not every listing is easy to find through a general search engine.

Step 2: Record What Each Listing Says

ColumnWhat to enter
SiteDirectory or platform name
Listing URLDirect link to the listing
Name / Address / Phone / Website shownCopy exactly what appears
Match?Yes / partial / no for each field
Claimed?Do you control it? Yes / no / unknown
Duplicate?Is there more than one listing on this site?
Priority scoreFrom the scoring grid below
ActionClaim, edit, merge, request removal, leave

Step 3: Score the Problems

Not every error deserves the same urgency. Score each listing on two simple scales and multiply them.

Visibility (1–3)
3 = Google, Bing, Apple, Facebook or a site customers in your trade use often
2 = a well-used national or trade directory
1 = a minor or rarely used site
Severity (1–3)
3 = wrong phone number, wrong address or listed as closed
2 = old name, duplicate listing, wrong website
1 = small formatting difference, missing hours
Priority
Visibility × Severity
6–9: fix this week
3–4: fix this month
1–2: fix when convenient
Hypothetical example: A café finds its old phone number on a popular national directory (3 × 3 = 9) and "Ave" instead of "Avenue" on a small local site (1 × 1 = 1). The first is fixed the same day; the second goes on the low-priority list.

Step 4: Note the Gaps

An audit also shows where you are missing. Compare your results against the layers in our guide to how many citations a business needs and note any important platforms or trade sites where you have no listing at all.

Step 5: Decide the Order of Work

  1. Your Google Business Profile and website, if either is wrong.
  2. Every listing scoring 6 or more.
  3. Duplicates on major platforms.
  4. Missing important listings.
  5. Low-priority corrections.

How Often to Re-Audit

A full audit is worth repeating after any change to your name, address, phone number or website, and periodically otherwise, for example once or twice a year. Google can update profiles using information from sources such as user reports and licensed content (Google Business Profile Help), so errors elsewhere can resurface. A light quarterly check of your top listings catches most problems early.

Paid Audit Tools

Commercial tools can speed up discovery by scanning many directories at once. They are useful, but each covers a different set of sites, so treat their results as a starting list and still check the listings that matter most to your customers by hand.

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