When your website, catalogue and IndiaMART give different numbers

Different numbers make buyers doubt all of them

When a buyer sees three different capacity or specification figures for the same company, they do not average them. They wonder which one is out of date, and whether anything else on the site is wrong. For a buyer shortlisting suppliers, that doubt can be enough to move to the next name.

It is a common pattern on Indian factory websites. The website was written when the plant had two lines; the catalogue was reprinted after the third; the IndiaMART listing was filled in by a sales executive who rounded up. Each copy was right when written, but nobody went back to bring them into line.

Google's guidance on creating helpful, reliable content asks, among its self-assessment questions, whether content presents information in a way that makes you want to trust it, and whether it has easily verified factual errors. Conflicting figures on your own pages fail both tests before anyone outside the company gets involved.

Where the figures usually disagree

On manufacturer sites, the mismatches tend to sit in the same places:

• Installed capacity: per month on one page, per year on another, and a different total on a directory.
• Size range: "15 mm to 200 mm" on the website, "up to 300 mm" in the catalogue.
• Ratings: pressure class, voltage, load or temperature range given differently on the product page and the datasheet.
• Material grades: an older grade still listed in the PDF after the product moved to a new one.
• Plant facts: built-up area, number of machines, employees, year of establishment.
• Certificates: an expired ISO certificate on one page, the renewed one on another.
• Contact details: an old phone number on a directory, a new one on the site.

What AI assistants do with conflicting figures

AI assistants that search the web build their answers from several sources at once. Google describes, in its guide to generative AI features in Search, how its systems retrieve information to improve the accuracy and freshness of AI responses, including by running a set of related queries for one question, which Google calls query fan-out. The same guide says Merchant Center and Business Profile information can help products and services appear in AI responses, which is one more place your figures need to agree.

When the sources an assistant finds give different capacities for your plant, you cannot choose which one it quotes. It may pick the directory figure over your own, or give a range, or leave the number out. A buyer who asks "What is the monthly capacity of [your company]?" may get an out-of-date figure. How directories feed these answers is covered in how IndiaMART and other directories shape AI answers, and the facts assistants look for in the first place are in the factory facts AI assistants look for. Both sit within the wider topic of LLM visibility.

The fix: one master sheet, one owner, one schedule

A single source of truth for a manufacturer is usually a spreadsheet, not software. It holds every number the outside world sees, and every other copy is updated from it.

1. Build the sheet. One tab for company facts (year established, plant addresses, area, employees, installed capacity with unit and period), one for products (size range, ratings, materials, standards, MOQ, lead time), one for certificates (number, body, scope, expiry).
2. Get each figure signed off. Production confirms capacities, engineering confirms specifications, quality confirms certificates. Note the date of sign-off beside each.
3. Name one owner. One person makes changes to the sheet and to every published copy.
4. List every copy. Website pages, PDF catalogues and datasheets, IndiaMART, TradeIndia, Justdial, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn company page, trade fair directories, tender vendor profiles.
5. Correct every copy against the sheet. Start with the website and the catalogue, then the directories.
6. Review on a schedule. Quarterly is enough for most plants, plus an immediate update when capacity, a product range or a certificate changes.

A before and after for one product line

Before, for a made-up TMT bar plant:

After: every source states "Installed capacity: 60,000 tonnes per year (5,000 tonnes per month)" and "Fe 500D TMT bars, 8 mm to 32 mm", with the catalogue reissued as a 2026 edition and the old PDF removed. Writing out "tonnes per year" in full on every source, instead of mixing MT, TPA and tonnes, removes one more source of confusion.

Make the website the reference copy

Treat the website as the published master, because it is the copy you control fully and the one buyers and search engines treat as yours. Put the figures in HTML text, not only in images or PDFs, so they can be read and compared; why AI assistants struggle with a PDF catalogue explains the reason. Put each product's figures in one table on its product page, set out as in what an industrial product page needs before a buyer will enquire.

If your developer adds structured data, it must carry the same figures. Google's structured data policies require markup to be a true representation of the page content, so markup that still says the old figure is one more mismatch.

A checklist for this week

• Search your own website for every capacity figure and list them.
• Open your current and old catalogue PDFs and note their figures.
• Check IndiaMART, TradeIndia, Justdial and your Business Profile.
• Agree one figure per fact with production, engineering and quality.
• Update the website first, then reissue the catalogue, then fix directories.
• Remove or clearly date old PDFs.
• Diary a quarterly review with one named owner.

For more on how mismatched figures affect buyers, see EbizIndia's note on specifications that do not match across sources. Related pieces are collected in the AI visibility hub.