Data aggregator.In plain English.

Google says the information in Business Profiles comes from a variety of sources: crawled web content, licensed data from third parties, facts users contribute, and owners who claim their profiles. It also shows profile information on other sites and apps through the Google Maps Platform.

Foursquare says its Places data powers consumer apps including Apple Maps and OpenAI, and lets businesses claim a listing and keep their hours, website and contact details current. Apple says it may pass Maps issue reports about third-party data to the provider so it can fix them.

So one wrong record at an aggregator can spread to many sites that buy its data, which is why old addresses and phone numbers keep coming back.

Fixing the record at the source stops the same mistake reappearing elsewhere. Claim your Google Business Profile, claim or update your Foursquare listing, and check your Apple Maps place through Apple Business.

Example: an HVAC company moved two years ago, but its old address keeps returning on small directories. Correcting the record at the aggregators that feed those directories stops it coming back after each fix.