NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. In Local SEO, your NAP data acts as the digital fingerprint for your brick-and-mortar business.
Google crawls the web looking for your NAP data on directories, social media profiles, and local chamber of commerce websites to verify that your business is legitimate and located where you say it is. If your NAP is identical across all platforms, Google trusts your business more and ranks you higher. If your NAP is inconsistent (e.g., different phone numbers or old addresses), Google's algorithm loses trust, resulting in lower local rankings.