Thirty minutes. No pitch. Just a map of what your marketing is missing. Send your brief →
FIELD GUIDE 14
The citation checklist
You cannot tell search engines you are credible. Credibility is what other sources say about you when you are not in the room.
A citation is any mention of your business name, address and phone number on another website, with or without a link. They matter for two reasons: they corroborate that you exist as described, and they are read by the systems now writing answers about you.
The tiers, in order of value
| Tier | What it is | Worth the effort? |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Independently maintained registers | Licensing bodies, trade associations, accreditation schemes, manufacturer installer lists | Highest value. Hard to fake, therefore trusted |
| 2. Editorial mentions | Local press, community sites, genuine best-of lists, supplier case studies | Very high value, hardest to get |
| 3. Major platforms | Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Facebook | Essential baseline, do these first |
| 4. Sector directories | The two or three your customers actually use in your trade | Worth doing, then stop |
| 5. Bulk directory blasts | Automated submission to hundreds of low-quality sites | Largely worthless, and creates NAP inconsistencies you then have to clean up |
WHERE THE MONEY GETS WASTED
Tier 5 is what most citation-building services sell, because it is the only tier that can be automated. Tier 1 is where the value is, it takes an afternoon, and almost nobody does it because it cannot be outsourced to a tool.
Tier 1, the afternoon that is worth more than the rest
Work through these for your own trade
- Every licence or registration you hold: is your public register entry correct and current?
- Every trade association you pay for: are you on their public find-a-member directory, with the right details?
- Every manufacturer whose products you install: do they have an approved installer finder, and are you on it?
- Every accreditation scheme: is your certificate listed publicly and in date?
- Any insurance or guarantee scheme that publishes members.
- Any local authority approved-trader scheme.
These are almost always already paid for. Businesses hold the accreditation, pay the annual fee, put the badge on the van, and never check whether the public listing that comes with it is correct or even switched on.
The consistency rule
- One canonical version of name, address and phone. Written down, used everywhere, no variations.
- "Ltd" or "Limited", "St" or "Street": pick one and never mix them.
- One phone number across all citations. Different tracking numbers in different places is a real and common cause of inconsistency.
- Fix old listings rather than creating new ones. A stale duplicate is worse than a missing listing.
- Search your old address and old phone number. Whatever comes back needs correcting or removing.
The quarterly check
- Search your business name in quotes and review the first three pages of results.
- Search your phone number on its own. This surfaces listings you have forgotten about.
- Confirm the top five citations still show current details.
- Add one Tier 1 or Tier 2 citation. One per quarter beats a hundred in one go.
- Remove or correct anything showing a former address, name or number.
FIG. 03 · SOURCES, CHECKED 2 AUGUST 2026
Every number above was traced to its primary source before publication. Where a widely repeated figure could not be verified at the source, it was cut rather than repeated.
- VerifiedMethod rather than ranking-factor surveys Local ranking factor surveys are opinion polls of practitioners rather than measurements, and their weightings move year to year. This guide is organised by how verifiable a source is, which is the property that actually makes a citation useful to a search engine or a language model.
RANKTHREAD
You have probably already paid for the best ones
The highest-value citations for most service businesses are the registers attached to accreditations they already hold. Checking them costs nothing and is routinely the single biggest quick win in a local visibility audit.
RANKTHREAD
Get the next one
We publish a new field guide most weeks. Plain method, sources cited, no pitch. Leave your address and we will send the next one.
