What it is
Structured data is a block of code on your website that states facts in a format machines can read. For a local business, the facts are your name, address, opening hours, phone number and website. Google's documentation uses a format called JSON-LD, which sits in a script tag and is invisible to visitors. Many website platforms and plugins can add it for you.
What Google requires
Only two things: the business name and the address. For the address, include as many parts as you can, such as street, locality, region and postal code. Everything else is optional but recommended.
What is recommended
- Opening hours, as days with opening and closing times. Seasonal closures use start and end dates written year-month-day.
- A phone number with country and area code.
- The web address of the location, which must work.
- Latitude and longitude accurate to at least 5 decimal places.
- A price range, kept under 100 characters or Google will not show it.
- For restaurants, the cuisine and a menu link.
The review and rating fields are only for sites that collect reviews of other local businesses, so a shop should not put its own ratings in the markup.
How to check it
Google suggests three steps: test the markup with the Rich Results Test and fix critical errors, deploy a few pages and use the URL Inspection tool to confirm Google can reach them, then submit a sitemap. Pages blocked by robots.txt, a noindex tag or a login will not work. Re-crawling can take several days.
What it will not do
Google does not promise that rich results will appear, and says breaking its guidelines can lead to a manual action in which the markup is ignored. It also says no special schema is needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. So the markup is a tidy way to state facts you already show on the page, not a shortcut.
How to brief your developer
Ask for the most specific LocalBusiness type that fits, such as a dentist or a restaurant, because Google says to use the most specific subtype. Give them your exact name, address and hours as they appear on your Business Profile, so everything matches. Then ask them to show you the test result.
Send your developer your exact name, address and hours, and ask for the test result.
How this post was made: an AI drafted it from the official pages listed under Sources, every figure was checked against those pages, and the Reveaxa team approved it before it was published. Our own advice is marked as such. If a source changes, we update the post and its date.
Reveaxa guide reference: RVX-B-localbusiness-schema-markup-explained