Schema markup for local business: what still works

A person reading a bakery's contact page knows at once that "Mon–Fri 7am–7pm" means opening hours. A search engine has to be told. Schema markup does exactly that: it describes the facts on the page in a format Google, Bing and AI assistants read without guessing. Below is which types matter for a local business, what no longer does anything in 2026, and how to test it.

What schema markup is

Schema markup uses the schema.org vocabulary, shared by all the major search engines. On a page it's usually written as JSON-LD: a separate block of code, invisible to visitors, which Google recommends because it's easy to generate and maintain.

For a local business, a block looks roughly like this:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Bakery",
  "name": "Example Bakery",
  "url": "https://examplebakery.com",
  "telephone": "+1-512-555-0100",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "100 Example St",
    "addressLocality": "Austin",
    "addressRegion": "TX",
    "postalCode": "78701",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": 30.26715, "longitude": -97.74306 },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
    "opens": "07:00",
    "closes": "19:00"
  }],
  "sameAs": ["https://www.instagram.com/examplebakery"]
}

The block says the same as the contact page, with no room for interpretation: what kind of business it is, where it is, when it's open and which profiles are officially its own.

Which schema types a local business needs

The most specific type matters. schema.org has subtypes for many trades: Restaurant, CafeOrCoffeeShop, Bakery, Dentist, HairSalon, BeautySalon, AutoRepair, GeneralContractor, Attorney, RealEstateAgent and many more. Google asks for the most specific one that fits.

Required and recommended properties. For LocalBusiness, Google requires the name and address and recommends hours, coordinates (at least five decimal places), a phone number with country code, the page URL and a short price range. For Organization, it recommends a logo (at least 112 × 112 pixels), official profiles in sameAs, and identifiers such as a VAT number in vatID where you have one.

What stopped working in 2026

Google displays structured data only for the types in its search gallery, and the list has been shrinking:

• FAQ rich results. Since 2023 Google had shown them only for authoritative government and health sites, and from 7 May 2026 it stopped showing them altogether. The markup does no harm, but it no longer does anything in Google results.
• Reviews about yourself. Google says a business that marks up reviews of itself on its own site isn't eligible for review stars, widget or not. The stars next to your business come from your Google profile, not your site.
• Markup for things not on the page. Hours, prices or reviews that exist only in the code, not in the visible text, break Google's guidelines and can lead to a manual action.

Schema markup and AI search

In its documentation on AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google says plainly that there's no special schema you need to add and no new files for AI. The one rule it states about structured data is that it must match the visible text.

That doesn't make it irrelevant. An AI assistant answering "which bakeries near downtown are open on Sunday" needs reliable facts: address, hours, what you sell. When the same facts appear identically in your text, your markup and your Google Business Profile, the answer about you comes out right. When they differ, say old hours on the site and new hours on Google, the assistant has to pick one. The other steps to appear in AI answers are in how to show up in ChatGPT and AI Overviews, and llms.txt is covered separately in what is llms.txt.

How to test it

1. Google's Rich Results Test shows which types Google finds on a page and whether they're eligible for search features.
2. The Schema Markup Validator checks any schema.org type, including ones Google doesn't display.
3. Search Console: after launch, the enhancement reports show errors and warnings across the whole site.

Checklist

1. Organization on the home page, with logo, official profiles and contact details.
2. LocalBusiness with the most specific type, on each location's page.
3. Hours, address and phone match in the text, the markup and your Google profile.
4. BreadcrumbList on inner pages, Article on posts.
5. Nothing marked up that isn't also in the visible text.
6. Pages pass the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator without errors.

The sites we build launch with schema markup generated from the same data as the pages, so hours changed in one place change everywhere. Details are on our web design page.