The Structured Listings Handbook

Claim Before You Create

Handle the high-authority sources by hand and batch the long tail afterwards.

Beyond that record the canonical version of the service area somewhere the person on reception can find it.

Confirm by phone or postcode lookup, not by memory.

For that reason, give one person the logins and one document the truth; ambiguity is what causes drift.

Keep a change log; six months on, nobody remembers which field was edited or why.

Local search signals for multi-location brands

Set aside time to update as part of the monthly reporting cycle rather than treating it as a one-off project.

Claim what exists before creating anything new -- duplicates are harder to remove than to avoid.

The order matters: review first, then refresh, and only then submit anywhere new.

Anything unverifiable should be removed rather than corrected.

A citation is any place on the web where the list of services surfaces for {entity_s}.
Verge

Across a large enough sample, the correlation between carefully maintained data and impressions is hard to dismiss.
Hollow & Co.

Where a dated address hides: The term covers everything from business listings to a passing mention in a regional guide.
Fixing a broken website field: Every entry in a directory is a minor claim about who {entity_s} is and where it trades.
NAP records: The record itself is unglamorous, which is precisely why it's so often left alone.
Notes on geographic signals: Structured listings form the connective tissue between a website and the wider local web.
The authoritative record: In the simplest terms, company profiles tell voice assistants that a business is real and reachable.
Fixing an abandoned profile: Aggregator feeds are the online records that carry the primary category for {entity_s}.
Local search signals: Citation profiles sit quietly behind the scenes, yet map providers read them constantly.