One block, done well, is enough. A LocalBusiness block on your homepage, with the most specific type that's true, your real name, address, phone and hours, and a sameAs list of profiles that actually load. Most of the rest is optional, and some of it, like marking up your own reviews, gets you nothing.
What schema markup does a local business need?
Less than most plugins add. Google's LocalBusiness documentation lists two required properties: name and address. Everything else is recommended, and some of it only fits restaurants or stores.
The same page says LocalBusiness is a subtype of Organization and recommends following the Organization fields too. That's where your logo, description and sameAs live. Google's Organization guide says this markup can help Google "disambiguate your organization in search results." It doesn't need to be on every page.
Two rules matter more than any single property. The general structured data guidelines say: "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page." And Google's introduction to structured data says it's better to supply "fewer but complete and accurate recommended properties" than to fill every field badly.
If your hours exist only inside the JSON-LD, fix the page first.
Here's how I sort the fields for a service practice:
| Property | Worth adding? | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| name | Yes, required | Spelled exactly as on your sign and your Business Profile |
| address | Yes, required | The full postal address where you see clients |
| telephone | Yes | Google asks for the country code and area code |
| url | Yes | The working URL of that location |
| openingHoursSpecification | If you publish hours | Must match the page and your profile |
| sameAs | Yes | Only profiles that load, more on this below |
| geo | Optional | Google wants at least five decimal places |
| priceRange | Only if it's true | Under 100 characters, or Google won't show it |
| aggregateRating or review of yourself | No | Your own reviews aren't eligible for stars |
| FAQPage | Optional | Google stopped showing FAQ results in May 2026 |
The review row surprises people. Google's review snippet rules say that when a business controls the reviews about itself, its pages with LocalBusiness or Organization markup are ineligible for the star feature. Embedded review widgets count too. If you were planning an FAQ block for stars, read what changed with FAQ schema in 2026 first.
One more case. If you work only online and don't publish an address, LocalBusiness isn't the honest fit, because address is required. Organization has no required properties, per Google, and describes you without inventing an office.
Which LocalBusiness type fits a service practice?
The most specific one that's true. Google's instruction is short: "Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible."
Schema.org has a few that fit the practices I work with. LegalService is "a business that provides legally-oriented services, advice and representation, e.g. law firms." AccountingService is defined in two words, "Accountancy business." MedicalBusiness covers "businesses run by health professionals," which is where a therapy practice usually lands.
Watch out for ProfessionalService. It sounds like the right label for a consultancy or a studio, and schema.org says it "was deprecated due to confusion with Service." It still validates. It just doesn't say much.
If nothing on the list fits, say an architecture studio or an independent advisor, plain LocalBusiness is fine. Don't pick a wrong subtype to look precise. The guidelines say your structured data "must be a true representation of the page content," and a made-up category fails that test. If you genuinely do two things, Google accepts an array of types and doesn't support additionalType.
What goes in sameAs, and why does it break?
Links to your profiles elsewhere. Schema.org defines sameAs as the "URL of a reference Web page that unambiguously indicates the item's identity." Google's Organization guide gives the practical version: a profile page on a social media or review site, and you can list several.
It's the line that ties your site to the same business everywhere else, and Google's introduction says it "can make general use of the sameAs property."
Here's what we found when we measured it. In September 2026 we read 54 independent therapy practice websites in ten US metros, with the method published in the index write-up. Forty-seven of the 54 had an Organization or LocalBusiness block. Twenty-three of those 47 had no sameAs at all.
That's the part worth sitting with. The block existed. The line tying it to LinkedIn, Psychology Today or the Business Profile didn't. My reading, and it's only a reading, is that the markup gets set up once at launch and nobody opens it again.
Three more sites listed at least one profile that didn't resolve. That's how sameAs breaks: a renamed handle, a closed account, a directory that changed its URL structure, a link copied from a logged-in view. A broken link there points a machine at nothing.
Keep it to three to six profiles you control and still use. If you haven't logged into an account this year, leave it out.
Does schema help AI assistants identify you?
Not as a ticket in. Google's guide to AI features says: "There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." Among the fundamentals it does list is making sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page.
I still add it, for a plainer reason. A machine trying to confirm you exist compares what it finds, and schema states your facts in one place, the same way, every time. I wrote about those checks in whether a machine can confirm you're real, and about deciding what the central entity even is in the entity map for small brands.
Outside Google, I have no published documentation to point to, so I promise nothing there.
How do you check that it works?
Five checks, in this order:
- Paste your homepage into Google's Rich Results Test. You want LocalBusiness detected and no critical errors.
- Run the same URL through the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org and confirm sameAs sits inside the business entity, not loose on its own.
- Open every sameAs URL in a private window. Each one should load your profile, not a login screen or a 404.
- Put name, address, phone and hours from the markup next to what the page says and what your Business Profile says. Any difference is the thing to fix.
- After you publish, use URL Inspection in Search Console, which is the step Google's LocalBusiness guide names before asking for a recrawl.
Then keep your expectations honest. The general guidelines say Google "does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results, even if your page is marked up correctly according to the Rich Results Test."
Questions I get about this
Do I need LocalBusiness schema if I already have a Google Business Profile?
They do different jobs. The profile lives inside Google. The markup lives on your site and describes the same business in a format any machine can read. Google's AI features guide lists keeping your Business Profile up to date and your structured data matching your page, so make them say the same thing.
Should the LocalBusiness block go on every page?
No. Google's Organization guide recommends the homepage or a single page that describes the business, and says you don't need it on every page.
Can I mark up my Google reviews on my own site?
You can, but you won't get stars for it. Google says pages where the business controls the reviews about itself are ineligible for the star review feature, and that includes embedded review widgets.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/local-business
- Google Search Central, Organization structured data: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/organization
- Google Search Central, Introduction to structured data markup: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data
- Google Search Central, General structured data guidelines: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies
- Google Search Central, Review snippet structured data: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/review-snippet
- Google Search Central, AI features and your website: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
- Schema.org: LocalBusiness, ProfessionalService, LegalService, AccountingService, MedicalBusiness and sameAs: https://schema.org/LocalBusiness
All pages were read on November 10, 2026. The sample figures come from our September 2026 dataset of 54 therapy practice websites, read without JavaScript, up to eight pages per site. Drafted with AI assistance; every quote was checked against its source. If you'd rather I read your markup and the rest of your identity signals, that's part of the audit, or you can book a strategic fit call and we'll look at it together.
