Structured data

A visitor reading your contact page understands that a string of numbers is your phone number. Structured data says it explicitly to Google, in a block of code that visitors don't see. Google recommends the JSON-LD format because it is the easiest to add and maintain.

For a local business the type is LocalBusiness, or the most specific type that fits, such as Restaurant, DaySpa or HealthClub. Name and address are required. Phone, opening hours, price range, menu and map position are recommended.

Valid markup can make a page eligible for richer results, which Google calls rich results. Google decides case by case whether to show them. For blog posts, our guide to writing articles for SEO and for ChatGPT shows how markup fits into an article.

Website builders and SEO plugins often add structured data themselves, so look at what your site already outputs before adding more by hand.

1. Paste the address of your home page or contact page into Google's Rich Results Test. It lists the items it found and any errors or warnings.
2. Compare every value with the page: same name, same address, same opening hours as the text visitors read.
3. In Search Console, URL Inspection tells you whether Google found structured data on a page. The Enhancements section shows a report only for supported types, such as breadcrumbs, events or recipes. Business details have no report of their own, so an empty section is not a fault.

• Marking up information visitors can't see on the page. Google asks you not to, even when the information is accurate.
• Star ratings about your own business. Google's local business documentation reserves review and rating markup for sites that collect reviews of other businesses.
• Markup that stops matching the page: new opening hours in the text, old ones in the code.