Your website is one source of several
An assistant that searches the web reads whatever it finds for the question it was asked, and for a local question that is often not your site. It is the listing on a map, an entry in a directory, a page of reviews, a mention in the local paper.
Some assistants show the pages they used as links under the answer. Ask one about your own trade and town, open those links, and you will see where the description of your business came from.
The places that usually describe you
Map listings first. Google Business Profile, Apple Business Connect and Bing Places each hold a name, an address, a number, opening hours and a category for you, whether or not you have ever claimed them.
Then directories, national and local, including the trade bodies you belong to. Review sites for your kind of business. Your social profiles. Local news and community sites that have written about you.
You do not need to be everywhere. The places worth your time first are the ones that appear when you search for your own trade and town.
Why the details have to match
A person who finds two phone numbers for one business shrugs and tries both. A machine has to decide whether they are the same business at all. An old address, a number from before you moved, a trading name in one place and the registered name in another: each is a reason to doubt the rest.
Google’s own guidelines for business listings ask for the name you use consistently on your signage, website and stationery, and for an accurate address and number. That is the same discipline a machine relies on everywhere else.
Your website is the one source you fully control, so it should state the facts once and the same way everywhere: in the text a person reads, and in the structured data a machine reads. The free assessment on this site now compares the two and tells you if they disagree.
Both languages, one business
A listing usually has a single name. If your business has a Welsh name and an English one, decide which is the business name and use exactly that everywhere, then mention the other in the description.
Addresses need the same decision. Stryd Fawr or High Street, Caerdydd or Cardiff: both are right, but a listing that says one and a directory that says the other look like two places. Pick one form for the listings and use it on all of them, and let your own bilingual pages give both.
Write the description in the language your customers search in, and say plainly that you work in Welsh and English if you do. That sentence is the one an assistant can repeat to somebody who asks for a business that speaks Welsh.
An audit for an afternoon
Start with one line: your name, address, telephone number and opening hours exactly as you want them to appear. Everything else is checked against it.
Then work outwards from the places a customer would actually find. Most businesses get through the list below in an afternoon, and the first two items do most of the good.
- Search your trade and town as a customer would, and note every listing that appears for you
- Claim your map listings and correct them against your one line
- Update or remove old directory entries you control
- Ask the owners of other listings to correct theirs
- Link your profiles from your site and list them as sameAs
- Check again in a few months
Why sameAs Listing your profiles in your structured data as sameAs tells a machine they all describe one business, rather than leaving it to guess from similar names.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be on every directory?
No. One accurate listing on a site that appears for your trade and town is worth more than twenty you never check. An entry with your old number does more harm than having no entry there at all.
I moved or changed my number. What do I update first?
Your map listings, then your own website, then the directories you control. Then ask the others. Old entries are the most common reason one business ends up with two sets of details.
Does having a Welsh and an English name cause problems?
Not if you are consistent. The problem is the same business appearing under one name here and another there with nothing to connect them. Pick the name you trade under, use it everywhere, and mention the other in the description.
Can Safle fix my listings for me?
The free assessment reads your website, not your listings. It does compare the contact details your page shows with the ones in its structured data, and an update states them the same way in both languages. Claiming and editing a listing needs the owner’s own verification, so that part is yours.
How do I know which sources an assistant used?
Some assistants list the pages they drew on under the answer. Others do not, and none publishes the full list of what it reads. The practical test is the first item in the audit: search as a customer would, and look at what comes up for you.