Local Citations for Real Estate Agents: The 13 That Matter, in Order

Thirteen citations matter for a real estate agent: your MLS member record, your state license record, your page on the brokerage website, Google Business Profile, Zillow (which is also your Trulia profile), Realtor.com, Homes.com, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Yelp, and the data aggregators Data Axle, Foursquare and TransUnion’s Digital Business Profile.

Work them from the top: the first three are the records the portals and your clients check you against, Zillow and Homes.com copy your listings from the MLS, and Bing, once linked, overwrites its entry with your Google profile, so a detail fixed higher up stays fixed below.

The long lists that rank for this search fill up with directories that charge agents for a spot, which is not where a buyer or seller goes to choose one. What the thirteen carry is the name, brokerage and phone number a client sees when they check you before calling, and the data Google builds your profile from. Settle those details and your website address once, then paste the same text into each.

The 13 citation sites, in the order to work them

The records everything else is checked against

1. Your MLS member record. Each listing you enter carries your name, office and contact details from this record to IDX websites and the portals, and NAR’s IDX policy requires those displays to show the listing firm with the email or phone number the listing broker supplies. A changed phone number or email does not flow into listings already entered: Canopy MLS, for one, has members refresh the agent details on each active listing. After any change, open one of your active listings and look.

2. Your state license record. The commission’s license lookup is what a client, a broker or a portal checks you against, so the name on it is the name to use everywhere. Zillow verifies license numbers in the exact format each state issues, down to the leading zeros.

3. Your page on the brokerage website. It often ranks for your name, a referred client uses it to confirm you are with the firm, and the brokerage controls it. Give your broker the name, phone number, email and photo you use everywhere else, and make taking the page down part of any exit.

The profiles clients check before they call

4. Google Business Profile. Google lists real estate agents among individual practitioners, who may have a profile of their own when they are public-facing and can be reached at the verified location during stated hours. Where several agents work from one office, the brokerage keeps a separate profile and yours carries only your name; a solo agent at a branded office shares a single profile named “Brokerage: Your Name”. Hold ownership in your own Google account, add the brokerage or a vendor as managers if they work on it, and give the profile the one phone number and website you use on every other record. Eligibility and setup are covered in Google Business Profile for real estate agents.

5. Zillow, which is also your Trulia profile. The profile is free and one profile shows on both sites. Zillow has taken listings from MLS IDX feeds since 2021 and matches them to you by the email address in the feed and by your MLS agent ID. Add the email your MLS has for you as a secondary email and an agent ID for each MLS you belong to; your listings and past sales then appear within about a day. On a team, each agent adds the ID to their own profile; the team profile takes none.

6. Realtor.com. Move, Inc. runs it under a license from NAR, and it sets up a basic profile when you join the MLS, so yours already exists. After that the MLS stops reaching it: a new phone number or email you give the MLS does not update your Realtor.com profile, so claim it and make every change there. Fill it in completely, because Realtor.com ranks its agent search partly on how complete a profile is.

7. Homes.com. Profiles are free, listings arrive by direct feed from the MLS, and you claim yours by choosing your MLS and finding yourself by name, email or MLS ID. Homes.com’s help says the office you signed up under can’t be changed from your account, so after a move it takes a support request.

Maps and directories

From here down, the list covers business listings for a place. The brokerage keeps them for its office, and an agent needs them only alongside a Google profile of their own.

8. Apple Maps, through Apple Business. Apple Business Connect became Apple Business in April 2026 and is still free. When you claim a location Apple already has, it can verify you by calling the number it has on record, which after a move is the old one. If another account manages the location, Apple takes a transfer request with a business license or utility bill, and the review can take up to five business days.

9. Bing Places. Free, and it can import your Google profile. At every sync Bing overwrites a matched Bing listing with the Google data, so correct Google first and import second.

10. Yelp. Free to claim. Yelp passes some of its business page information to Apple, so a stale phone number on Yelp can turn up on Apple Maps.

The aggregators that feed smaller directories

11. Data Axle. Free for up to ten locations. Confirm your record and Data Axle sends it to search engines, online directories, in-car and phone navigation and virtual assistants.

12. Foursquare. Claim your business through Foursquare’s business search. Foursquare says its places data powers OpenAI and Apple Maps.

13. TransUnion Digital Business Profile, formerly Neustar Localeze, publishes to more than 80 search platforms, directories, navigation systems and apps for $99 a year per location. The fee is worth paying in the year of a move or a new phone number, while the old details are still in circulation, and rarely otherwise.

What to skip

• The long directory tables. Many of the extra sites are directories that charge agents for a spot. Google’s spam policies name low-quality directory links as an example of link spam, so a spot bought for its link can cost more than it returns.
• Redfin. Its agent pages show Redfin’s own agents and its partner agents, who keep their license at their own brokerage and pay Redfin a referral fee when a referred client closes. Joining is a lead purchase to judge on its numbers.
• A second Google profile for a team name, a desk you do not work from, or a new address after a move. Google hides duplicate profiles from Search and Maps, and a business that moves keeps its profile and changes the address.

Keeping the details consistent

Detail	Use everywhere	Fix any record that shows
Name	The name on your license and MLS record	A former brokerage or team attached to your name
Brokerage	The broker you are licensed under now	A former brokerage as current
Phone	A number you own, so a move does not change it	A dead number, an old office line, a call center
Website	One page about you, the same address on every profile	An expired domain or your page at a former brokerage
Address	The office clients visit, hidden on Google if they never come to you	An old or unstaffed office, the wrong suite

Capital letters, “Suite” against “Ste.” and dashes or brackets in a phone number send no client to the wrong place, so spend the time on the rows above. Run the list again whenever your brokerage, phone number, email, website or team changes, including the profiles you run yourself on Facebook and LinkedIn. Answer any email from Google about a suggested edit: you have four days to reject it before Google may publish it if your website or other public information supports it, which makes your own contact page part of the list.

When you change brokerages

A move changes your office in one day, often with your phone number, email and website, and each system above takes the change its own way. The order that holds:

1. Move your license to the new broker with the state commission, and your MLS membership to the new office. The new broker may have to approve the MLS transfer.
2. Ask the old brokerage to take your page down and the new one to publish yours.
3. Edit the address, phone number and website on your existing Google profile. Google tells a business that moves to update the profile it has and not create another, and if the old brokerage owns yours, request ownership: the owner has three days to answer before Google may let you claim it.
4. On Zillow, change the office, phone number and email in your professional information, add the new MLS email as a secondary email, and keep your MLS agent ID on the account, because your past sales stay attached only while it is there.
5. Ask Realtor.com’s agent support to change your office, since the MLS transfer does not reach it, and do the same with Homes.com.
6. Update Apple, Yelp and the aggregators, then sync Bing from the corrected Google profile.

Citation management for property managers

For a property management company the maps, directories and aggregators above carry over, with two changes. Google treats rental and for-sale properties, vacant apartments and model homes among them, as ineligible for a profile, and a leasing or sales office that meets people during its hours as eligible. The profiles follow the offices: one for each community with an on-site leasing office and one for the office owners and tenants visit, never one per rental.

The second change is scale, since the work runs per location. Data Axle stays free up to ten locations and TransUnion charges for each one. When you update many Google profiles from a spreadsheet, Google’s help says a blank field can take an automatic update, so fill every column. NARPM members also appear in NARPM’s property manager search.

How citations affect real estate SEO

Correct citations do two jobs. A client who checks you on Google, Zillow and Realtor.com finds the same agent at the same firm with the same number, and Google, which builds profiles from licensed data and what the web says, has nothing wrong to copy. Adding directories past these thirteen does not move an agent up: Google’s explanation of local ranking names relevance, distance and prominence, and for prominence it points to how many websites link to a business and how many reviews it has. The rest of that system, the profile, its reviews and the page it sends people to, is covered in local SEO for real estate agents.

Once the thirteen are right, they need attention only when a row in the table changes. If they are right and you still do not show up when people in your market search for an agent, the work left is on the website and in the reviews, and that is the ongoing work of our real estate SEO services.