Business identity, control 8 of 10
E-08 Maintain accurate local profiles and service representation
Name, address or service-area representation, contact details, hours and categories must reflect the real business and each platform's eligibility rules.
- Priority
- Gate. A FAIL stops publish or launch.
- Hard gate
- Yes. A FAIL stops publication, whatever the score.
- Change class
- APPROVAL_REQUIRED: Required exact authority must be valid before the consequential action.
- Quality bucket
- Business identity
Why it matters
A wrong phone number, address or opening time sends customers to the wrong place or to a dead line, and the business loses the visit or the call. Search engines and AI answer engines that find different details on the website and on listings may show the wrong ones or trust none of them. A single master record stops those differences appearing in the first place.
Evidence to review
- Operational records, verified profile access and live listing comparison.
How to implement
- Use a maintained master business record.
- Check regular and special hours, landing pages and duplicate profiles.
- Distinguish a customer-facing location, service-area business and registered address.
- Do not create virtual offices or keyword-stuffed business names to influence local results.
How UltimateSEO checks this
Partly automated. The scan records page signals, but a passing signal is kept as information: contextual or account evidence is still needed to establish the control.
The check looks at: where LocalBusiness schema exists the crawler compares NAP in schema with visible text; agreement with Google Business Profile and other listings is confirmed by the business.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Sources
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.3, catalogue dated 2026-10-14. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.