A dentist called me a few minutes ago with a request to help get rid of a Google My Business page that had been automatically created by Google. The page was for his nephew who had considered joining the practice but never did. Somehow Google got hold of his data and created the page. It will be easy enough to get Google to shut the page down via GMB support and I could quickly check the main data aggregators, but I wanted to make sure we also nipped this problem at all possible sources of the data. But how to find them?

This is where our free Local SEO productivity tool, NAP Hunter, comes in:

STEP 1
I put the nephew’s name and the office location into NAP Hunter and hit “Hunt”:
NAP Hunter Screenshot

 

STEP 2
The app quickly generated browser tabs of Google SERPs for different combinations of the NAP elements.

Here’s one for NAME + ADDRESS:
Name + Address

The first result from ucomparehealth.com had a full listing for Alexander Jubb at the business’ address:
ALexander Jubb Uhealthcompare

 

 

I then found this listing, strangely, in the NAME – ADDRESS SERP:

Alexander Jubb Angieslist

Here’s the complete profile on Angieslist:
Alexander Jubb Angieslist

And a CitySearch profile:

Alexander Jubb CitySearch

Knowing how these sites source data quickly led me to Factual which of course had a profile for Jubb:
Alexander Jubb Factual

And voila, mystery solved, in about 30 seconds, thanks to NAP Hunter.

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12 Response Comments

  • Michael klasno  August 5, 2014 at 10:13 am

    Thank you Andrew, you have finally given me/us a reason for the NAP Hunter app that makes business sense. This is Not a complaint, I just was frustrated trying to figure out how NAP Hunter was going to fit into my tool box.

    This case makes perfect sense of its use.

    Would you consider writing an more in-depth Overview article focusing on NAP Hunter’s other uses siting real cases. Others may not post agreement but I can’t believe i am the only SEO out there that gets overwhelmed with “suggestions” on How Citations and local SEO “must be Done.”

  • Andrew Shotland  August 5, 2014 at 10:32 am

    Michael,

    I totally get the tool box overload thing. From time to time, we’ll post additional ways to use the tool.

    We initially developed it for ourselves to make diagnoses like the one above quicker. So while we have been happy to share the tool with the Local SEO community, we probably haven’t done a particularly stellar job of making it clear why anyone else should use it.

    My fave use is when I get a prospect. Within a few seconds I can quickly surface some nasty NAP stuff.

  • Linda Buquet  August 5, 2014 at 11:33 am

    Awesome example of how handy NAP Hunter can be! Thanks for sharing Andrew!

  • Andrew Shotland  August 5, 2014 at 11:40 am

    Thanks Linda. And if anybody has any suggestions for improving the app, let us know.

  • Margaret Ornsby  August 6, 2014 at 3:40 am

    I’ve just started to use nap hunter and love it, hadn’t thought to use it this way
    – thank you for this idea!

  • Bill Bean  August 6, 2014 at 7:44 am

    My question is, can any of us mere mortals get Factual to update their info?

  • Andrew Shotland  August 6, 2014 at 9:30 am

    Bill, I have put an inquiry into Factual about this but I suspect we mere mortals can no longer update their data.

    On the positive side, Factual has been explicit about where they take data from and it’s somewhat clear which sites influence their data so a decent NAP cleanup job can often do the trick.

  • Richard Haussmann  August 6, 2014 at 10:32 am

    Great addition to my toolbox. The option to analyze where NAP elements conflict (name and address without a phone or without a correct phone) gave me a new angle on this kind of analysis. Thanks!

  • Toby  August 7, 2014 at 6:24 am

    Sorry if I missed something, but how did you know Factual was the source of this? Because you knew it was a data provider /aggregator? Helpful tool BTW.

    • Andrew Shotland  August 7, 2014 at 11:11 am

      Toby, I know that Factual supplies data to some of these sites, but I am envisioning the next version of the tool highlighting the data aggregator for each domain.

  • Jason Stovall  August 7, 2014 at 8:21 am

    Andrew,

    Great add on for sure and thanks a million for the share.

    Wondering do you use this tool along with Moz local search which basically can do the same thing correct? Thanks again, great job.

    • Andrew Shotland  August 7, 2014 at 11:13 am

      Jason, the challenge with Moz Local or NAP Hunter or any of these types of tools is that you can’t be sure if you are getting a complete picture of the data. ML does not scrape Google, so it doesn’t necessarily know about everything that’s indexed. I like using NAP Hunter for quick research.