Google's own structured data gallery lists over twenty feature types, from job postings to vacation rentals. A typical small business site needs only two: LocalBusiness and Organization, plus whatever matches its actual content, for example Product for a shop or Article for a blog. Below: what structured data is, what each type can show, Google's rules, and a checklist.
What structured data is
Structured data is code added to a page that labels its content in a format search engines can parse. Google's introduction to structured data defines it plainly: "Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content." On a business page that means marking up the business name, address, phone number, and similar facts, instead of leaving them as plain text a machine has to guess at. Google recommends JSON-LD, a script block placed in the page's head, as the easiest format to implement and maintain.
What Google says it's used for
Google's stated purpose is search appearance, not ranking. The introduction page explains: "Adding structured data can enable search results that are more engaging to users and might encourage them to interact more with your website, which are called rich results." It changes whether Google has the information needed to build an enhanced listing, not where a page ranks.
LocalBusiness: what it is and what it can show
LocalBusiness is the type for a business with a physical location or a service area. Google's Local Business structured data page says: "When users search for businesses on Google Search or Maps, Search results may display a prominent Google knowledge panel with details about a business that matched the query." The two required properties are name and address. Recommended properties include telephone, url, priceRange, geo, openingHoursSpecification, and menu for food businesses. Google also notes: "Since LocalBusiness is a subtype of Organization, we recommend following the fields for Organization in addition to the fields required and recommended below."
Organization: what it is and what it can show
Organization is broader and applies even to businesses without a single physical location. Google's Organization structured data page states its purpose: "Adding organization structured data to your home page can help Google better understand your organization's administrative details and disambiguate your organization in search results." Unlike LocalBusiness, nothing is required: "There are no required properties; instead, we recommend adding as many properties that are relevant to your organization." Google points to specific ones as most useful: "We recommend focusing on properties that are useful to your users, such as name or alternateName for your business name as well as an indication of real-world presence (for example, address or telephone) and online presence (for example, url or logo)."
A minimal example, using only properties documented on those two pages:
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "LocalBusiness",
"name": "Example Bakery",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
"addressLocality": "Springfield",
"addressRegion": "IL",
"postalCode": "62701",
"addressCountry": "US"
},
"telephone": "+1-555-010-0199",
"url": "https://www.example.com"
}
Google's rules
Two rules apply regardless of type. Markup must match what a visitor actually sees: "don't add structured data about information that is not visible to the user, even if the information is accurate." And it does not guarantee a rich result: the documentation for both LocalBusiness and Organization states, "Google does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results." Required properties must be present to be eligible at all: "You must include all the required properties for an object to be eligible for appearance in Google Search with enhanced display." Beyond that, Google says it is "more important to supply fewer but complete and accurate recommended properties rather than trying to provide every possible recommended property with less complete, badly-formed, or inaccurate data."
A short checklist
- Add Organization properties (name, url, logo, address, telephone) on the homepage or about page.
- Add LocalBusiness markup, including the required
nameandaddress, on the page describing the business location. - Use the most specific subtype available, such as Restaurant or DaySpa, rather than the generic LocalBusiness.
- Match every marked-up fact to what is visible on the page.
- Add a content-specific type only if it fits: Product for a shop, Article for a blog.
- Validate with Google's Rich Results Test before publishing.
What this means for AI answers
This section is our reasoning, not a Google statement. Google's page on AI features sets a low bar for appearing as a supporting link: "To be eligible to be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet, fulfilling the Search technical requirements." It names no extra requirement tied to structured data, so we do not claim that markup gets a page into AI Overviews. What it does is state a business's core facts, name, address, phone, hours, in a consistent, machine-readable form. That is a smaller claim than a ranking or visibility promise.
Our free GEO audit runs 10 buyer questions through Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, 3 times each, and shows what the 60 answers name and cite for your category.