Definition

A citation is a reference to a business's name, address, phone number or other identifying details on a third-party website, with or without a link back to the business's own site.

Citations are most commonly discussed in local SEO. Google's Business Profile guidelines note that Google detects category and identity information from a business's website and from mentions about the business across the web. Consistent name, address and phone number details across directories, industry listings and editorial pages help Google build a confident picture of a real-world business, which can in turn influence local search and map results.

Examples

• Industry directory listing

  A restaurant is listed in a regional dining guide with its trading name, full street address and phone number. The guide does not link to the restaurant's website, but Google can still pick up the mention as a citation.

• News article reference

  A local newspaper covers the opening of a new bookshop and prints the address and phone number in the article. The mention acts as a citation that reinforces the bookshop's identity in Google's local index.

Sources

• Google Business Profile Help — Guidelines for representing your business on Google

Related terms

• Local SEO
  The practice of optimising a business's online presence to surface in location-based search results, including the Local Pack and Google Maps.
• Local Pack
  A group of local business listings displayed with a map on Google Search, ranked by Google's local algorithm using relevance, distance and prominence.
• Google Business Profile
  A free Google listing that represents a real-world business across Google Search and Maps with details such as name, address, hours, photos and reviews.
• Backlink
  A hyperlink on one website that points at another. Search engines treat backlinks as one signal of how the wider web vouches for a page.
• External Link
  An HTML link that points from one website to a different domain, also called an outbound link from the source site's perspective.
• Knowledge Panel
  An information box in Google's search results, automatically generated for an entity from sources like the Knowledge Graph and the open web.
• Site Name
  The name Google displays above a page's title link in search results to identify which site the page belongs to.

Where QueryCatch uses this

• SEO Audit
• Competitor Analysis