LocalBusiness schema

LocalBusiness schema is the structured-data type for a physical or service-area business. Applied as JSON-LD, it states the business name, address (as a PostalAddress), phone, geo-coordinates, opening hours (as OpeningHoursSpecification), price range, and the specific business type. Schema.org provides many subtypes, LegalService, MedicalBusiness, AccountingService, RealEstateAgent, and dozens more, and using the most specific accurate subtype is what helps an engine place the business correctly.

The job of this markup is disambiguation and corroboration. It restates, in machine-readable form, the same NAP facts that appear in citations and the Google Business Profile, which reinforces the entity and reduces the chance an engine confuses the business with another. Pairing it with sameAs links to the business's authoritative profiles (its GBP, its Wikidata entry if it has one, its primary social accounts) ties the on-site entity to the off-site graph.

For local AI answers, this markup is increasingly load-bearing: an engine recommending a local business wants confident, corroborated facts, and on-site schema that agrees with the profile and the citations is exactly that. The common mistakes are using the generic LocalBusiness type when a specific subtype exists, marking up an address that does not match the GBP, and including an AggregateRating the business cannot substantiate. We validate the type choice, field completeness, and consistency with the off-site signals.