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Schema markup for local businesses: what helps AI assistants read you

Structured data is a small block of code, usually JSON-LD, that states your business facts in a format machines can read without guessing: name, address, hours, services. It does not make an assistant recommend you, but it makes the facts on your page harder to misread.

Updated October 30, 2026 · General information, not a guarantee of any result.

What it is and where it goes

Schema.org is a shared vocabulary that search engines support. For a local business you pick the most specific type that fits, such as Dentist, Plumber, Restaurant, LegalService or RealEstateAgent, falling back to LocalBusiness. The JSON-LD block goes in the page HTML, often on the homepage and the contact page. Most site builders have a custom-code or SEO setting for it.

Properties worth filling in

  • name, exactly as you trade.
  • address as a PostalAddress, or areaServed for service-area businesses.
  • telephone and url.
  • openingHoursSpecification, including how you will handle holidays.
  • geo coordinates, if you have a fixed location.
  • sameAs links to your official profiles, such as your Google, Apple, Yelp or social pages.
  • priceRange, and for restaurants servesCuisine and menu.
  • Services you offer, described on the page and, where it fits, in the markup.

Mistakes to avoid

  • Marking up facts that do not appear on the visible page. Search engines’ guidelines treat that as misleading.
  • Adding review or rating markup for reviews you wrote or collected in ways the guidelines do not allow.
  • Copying a template and leaving another business’s details in it.
  • Letting the markup drift out of date when hours or phone numbers change.

Generate it, check it, then measure

  1. 01Use our free generator to turn your details into a LocalBusiness JSON-LD snippet in your browser.
  2. 02Paste it into your site and check it with Google’s Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator.
  3. 03Make sure every value matches your page and your listings.
  4. 04Run the free scan to see what assistants say today, and re-check after the page has had time to be crawled again.

Questions

Do ChatGPT and Perplexity read schema markup?

Their providers have not published detailed rules on it for local recommendations. Search engines do use it, and assistants often build on search results, so it is a reasonable, low-cost step. Clear visible text matters more.

Is schema markup the same as llms.txt?

No. Schema markup is an established vocabulary that search engines support. llms.txt is a newer proposed file for language-model tools that the major assistants have not committed to for local results.

Check what AI says about your business

The free scan asks five customer-style questions with live web search and shows every reply word for word, who was named, and which pages were cited. About a minute, no card.

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