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Why your listings keep reverting.

You fixed the phone number on Yelp in March. It is wrong again in June. Nobody touched it. This is not a glitch, and it is not Yelp. It is how local business data moves, and once you know the route it takes, the fix is obvious and permanent.

Plumber replacing a kitchen sink shutoff valve

Where the wrong data comes from.

A handful of data aggregators supply business information to hundreds of directories, map apps, voice assistants and in-car navigation systems. When you correct a listing on one directory, you correct one copy. The aggregator still holds the old record, and the next time the directory refreshes from the aggregator, the old record comes back. The correction did not fail. It was overwritten, on schedule, by a source you never edited.

Aggregators feed the directories
A few upstream databases push name, address, phone and hours to most of the places a homeowner might look. Fix the directory and the feed reverts it. Fix the feed and the directories follow
Old records never die on their own
A previous owner, a previous address, a tracking number you used in 2019. Each one is still a record somewhere, and each refresh gives it another chance to surface
Duplicates split the signal
Two profiles for one location means reviews, citations and authority are divided between them. Google and the assistants see two weaker businesses instead of one strong one
The assistants read all of it
An AI model checking whether to name you compares what it finds. Three phone numbers and two sets of hours is a business it cannot confirm, so it names one it can

How many separate profiles currently exist for your business, across every directory a customer could find?

How to make a correction hold.

The order matters. Done backwards, the work undoes itself.

01

Establish the single truth

One name, one address format, one phone number, one set of hours, one service list. Written down, agreed, and used everywhere from this point on, including the website footer.

02

Correct the aggregators first

The upstream sources, before any directory. This is the step a one-time cleanup skips, and it is why the cleanup does not last.

03

Find and suppress the duplicates

Every duplicate profile located, and either merged into the primary or marked closed, so the authority it was holding flows to one place.

04

Correct the directories that matter

Google, Apple, Bing, Yelp, the industry directories for your trade, and the roughly 100 others that the aggregators do not fully control.

05

Monitor, because the feeds keep running

A quarterly check catches the record that resurfaced before a homeowner does. Ongoing suppression is cheap; discovering the problem from a lost job is not.

What reverting listings actually cost.

The visible cost is the customer who called the old number. The larger cost is invisible: the map pack position you did not get because the profile looked unreliable, and the AI answer that named the competitor whose facts agreed with each other. A listing scan on a typical single-location contractor finds conflicts on between 20 and 40 percent of its citations. Each one is a small reason to be skipped, and they add up to a business that is harder to find than the work deserves.

Questions owners ask about listings

I paid for a citation cleanup two years ago. Why is it wrong again?

Because the cleanup corrected the directories and not the aggregators feeding them. The feeds refreshed, the old data returned. It is the most common listing problem we see.

Does a tracking number on my listings hurt?

It can. A tracking number that does not match the number on your website and Business Profile is a conflict. Tracking numbers belong on ads and landing pages, where the source is the point, not on citations.

How many directories actually matter?

Fewer than a hundred for a local trade, and about six matter a great deal. But the aggregators feed all of them, so the count is less important than the source.

How do I see what my listings say right now?

The free listing scan on this site checks your name, address, phone, hours and services against 100+ directories and data providers and returns every conflict it finds.

Start with the gap that is costing you the most.

Most owners do not need all of this. They need the one thing currently leaking revenue,

  • Which channel is producing work, and which is producing noise
  • Where your visibility drops off against the companies taking your calls
  • The one fix that pays for itself fastest
  • What we would leave alone for now, and why
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