First pass
Field notes
What to keep
On the other hand, fix the business description before touching anything decorative.
Work from the aggregators outward, since fixing a source fixes everything downstream, more so after a move or a rebrand.
Set aside time to prune on a fixed schedule rather than treating it as a one-off project.
Confirm by phone or postcode lookup, not by memory, which is worth planning around.
Prefer removing a wrong listing to leaving it half-corrected. The pattern repeats: the businesses that audit as part of the monthly reporting cycle are the ones that stop worrying about it. Handled steadily, syndicated listings stop being a project and become a habit, particularly for a newer business. Silent listing decay is straightforward to miss since nothing visibly breaks.
Comparisons between competitors tend to show the majority of profiles carry at least one contradiction, at least in a competitive market. Put plainly, most damage here is self-inflicted: contradictory data across sources introduced during a rebrand or a move, once the obvious errors are gone. Do not submit to a new directory until the existing ones agree. The businesses that win here are not the loudest, only the most consistent, at least in a competitive market.
Resist the urge to vary the business name for keywords; consistency beats cleverness here. Anyone who has run a bulk audit knows the gap between a tidy profile and a neglected one widens across a city.