The Local SEO citation is basically nothing more than an online mention of your business and what makes it more simplified is that you do not even need to link your website to it. Just the plain text with no links attached to it will do the job for you.
It is not even necessary to have a website for your business if you want to get listed. The only essentials for a citation like this are the name of the business along with the address and phone number. It is almost similar to any other kind of business listing but the only difference here is that it is completely virtual.
It may not be a necessity but it is surely beneficial for you to have a website of your business that will help you in management and provide transparency to your customers.
Having a Local SEO Citation also helps you in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but only if the Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) on the citation are exactly the same as the one that you provided on your official website.
Similarly, a Partial Citation is not going to be of any help to you in the optimization process since it only consists of two of the three essentials of a proper and full Citation.
This part of the SEO is concerned mainly with the smartphones search results since local search results are indirectly linked to the mobile devices after Google introduced a new and separate algorithm for the users accessing their search engine on the mobile devices in 2015.
The main reason behind this is Google’s need to verify the accuracy of the website in providing their business details and information to them as well as the users.
It is possible for the business and website owners to lie about the details on the website but no one is going to lie on the citation because it will be of no use and will harvest zero benefits. The reason for a website to provide false information on their website could be that they are trying to rob people by implementing a fraud scheme through their business.
In that case, Google’s methods are coming to fruition because those websites will be eliminated from the ranking system on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) and will remain undiscoverable for the users (except in some special circumstances) until Google Decides they can trust them again.