The local citation audit checklist for agencies

A citation audit is the fastest way to find every place a local business is listed wrong, missing, or duplicated. For an agency it is also the strongest opening move you have: run it on a prospect, walk in with real findings about their actual listings, and let the broken entries make the case for you. This checklist walks through what to look at, in what order, and how to turn the findings into fixes.

What a citation audit actually checks

A citation is any place online that lists a business's name, address, and phone number, the trio usually shortened to NAP. When those three fields match everywhere a business appears, searchers and AI engines trust the business. When they drift out of sync, that trust erodes and the business gets harder to find. A citation audit reads each listing and tells you exactly where the business is wrong, where it is missing, and where it shows up more than once, so you know what to fix first.

The citation audit checklist

Work down the list in this order. The first three checks catch the problems that cost the most, and the later checks make sure you are not chasing noise or fixing low-value listings before high-value ones.

1. NAP consistency across the directories that matter. Confirm the exact name, address, and phone match everywhere, down to the suite number and the way the phone number is formatted.
2. Duplicate listings. Look for more than one entry for the same business on the same directory; duplicates split authority, divide reviews, and give searchers two answers to the same question.
3. Missing high-authority listings. Identify the directories that carry real weight for this business and flag the ones it is not listed on yet.
4. Industry-specific directories. Beyond the general directories, check the ones that matter for the business's vertical. Home services verticals are the place to start, with more industries added over time.
5. Google Business Profile NAP and primary category. The profile is the anchor for local search, so confirm its name, address, and phone match the website and that the primary category is the right one.
6. Map and review-site listings. Check the major maps and review platforms where buyers actually look, not just generic directories.
7. The tri-state read: match, real mismatch, or not shown. Only count a field as wrong when it is genuinely wrong. A field a directory simply does not display is not an error, and treating it like one is how reports lose trust.
8. Old address or tracking-number drift. Watch for a previous address or an old tracking phone line that never got updated and is still circulating on directories the business forgot about.
9. Prioritize by authority. Rank every finding by how much the directory it sits on actually matters, so a wrong listing on a high-authority maps or review site rises above a duplicate on an obscure site.
10. AI search visibility. Check whether AI engines mention the business when they answer best-in-category questions for its market, and which sources they cite when they do.
11. A monitoring cadence. Decide how often you will re-check, because listings drift over time and a clean audit today is not a clean audit forever.

Run the checklist without spending a day on it

You can work this list by hand, but it is slow, and by the time you finish the early listings may have changed. The faster path is to run a free citation audit that returns every wrong, missing, or duplicate listing across the directories that matter, each one scored by authority, in minutes. There is no signup and no credit card, and the report arrives by email, so you can run a free audit on a prospect before your first call and walk in with their actual numbers.

Live accuracy beats a stored database

This is the part of the checklist most tools get wrong. Many citation tools read from a stored database of listings collected at some earlier point, which means the report can describe the business as it was weeks or even months ago. The checks above are only as good as how current they are. Check the listings as they actually are right now and a listing that was fixed last week shows as fixed, while a listing that broke yesterday shows as broken. For an agency presenting to a client, that difference is the whole game: you are never caught explaining away a finding that turned out to be stale.

From checklist to fixed

An audit is the first step in a loop, not the end of it. Once you know what is wrong you turn findings into a one-click fix queue, where corrections apply automatically wherever a directory allows it, managed fixes route through us at $1.50 per citation, and owner-verification cases come with a self-guided playbook. After a listing is correct, ongoing monitoring keeps watching it and alerts you if it drifts back out of sync. The full audit to fix to monitor flow is on the how it works page, and when you are ready to subscribe, plans run from Solo at $39/mo for 5 locations, Agency Starter at $99/mo for 25 locations, Agency Pro at $249/mo for 100 locations, up to Scale at $599/mo for 500 locations, with done-for-you building at $1.50 per citation on top. Every tier and the per-citation rate are on the pricing page. The audit itself stays free.