Why it matters on an HVAC site
Contractors move, get acquired, add a suite number, or change from a mobile to a tracked line, and the change propagates to three places out of forty. What is left is a set of contradictory claims about the same business.
The tracked-line case is the one that catches good agencies. Call tracking is a sensible thing to want, and a number-swapping script that rewrites the phone number for every visitor including the crawler makes the site disagree with the profile permanently.
How to check it yourself
- List every platform carrying the business and record its exact name, address and phone, then diff them character by character rather than by eye.
- Fetch the site with JavaScript disabled to see the number a non-rendering crawler reads.
- Resolve the business on each platform through that platform’s own search rather than from a link on the company site, since a link in a footer may point at a different record from the one in use.
Worked through in numbers
A contractor moved offices in 2024, from Unit 4 to Unit 11 in the same building.
Across 38 platforms: 9 carry Unit 11, 24 carry Unit 4, and 5 carry no unit number. Two carry an old mobile number that now belongs to nobody at the company.
The address was corrected on all 38 over six weeks. The measurable effect was not a ranking jump; it was that the two dead numbers stopped receiving calls nobody was answering, which had been running for over a year.
Where this sits in the rankings
Scored under Local SEO. Name, address and phone matching everywhere, and why one suite number costs more than it looks like it should.