Fixing LocalBusiness Schema Gaps

What counts as a schema gap

A gap is any difference between what your business really is and what the structured data says it is. The block might be missing altogether, or it might exist but be too vague to be useful. The Local SEO Checker reports LocalBusiness schema completeness, and the gaps it surfaces tend to fall into a handful of patterns.

Google's documentation for local business structured data lists name and address as required, and recommends fields including telephone, url, geo, openingHoursSpecification, priceRange and department. None of this guarantees a special search feature. What the markup does is remove ambiguity about basic facts, and ambiguity is exactly what local search punishes.

Choosing the right type

Schema.org has a long tree of types beneath LocalBusiness. Pick the deepest one that is honestly true. If nothing fits exactly, go one level up rather than picking something close but wrong.

When two types are true

You can give an array: "@type": ["Restaurant", "BarOrPub"]. Only do this when both describe the whole business. A pub that serves food qualifies; a hairdresser that sells a few bottles of shampoo does not become a Store.

When LocalBusiness is the wrong type

If customers never meet you at a place, for example an online-only shop or a software company, Organization is the honest choice. A home-based trade that travels to customers can still use a LocalBusiness subtype, but how to handle the address and the areas covered is a website design question covered in the service-area coverage guide.

A complete block for a single location

This is a full block for a fictional practice. Every value here should be copied from your canonical business details, the same ones shown on the page. The phone number uses an Ofcom drama number range, so it is safe as an example.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dentist",
  "@id": "https://example.co.uk/#practice",
  "name": "Millbank Lane Dental",
  "url": "https://example.co.uk/",
  "telephone": "+44 114 496 0321",
  "email": "hello@example.co.uk",
  "image": "https://example.co.uk/images/practice-front.jpg",
  "logo": "https://example.co.uk/images/logo.png",
  "priceRange": "££",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "14 Millbank Lane",
    "addressLocality": "Sheffield",
    "addressRegion": "South Yorkshire",
    "postalCode": "S10 2AB",
    "addressCountry": "GB"
  },
  "geo": {
    "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
    "latitude": 53.38115,
    "longitude": -1.49872
  },
  "hasMap": "https://www.google.com/maps?cid=0000000000000000000",
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday"],
      "opens": "08:30",
      "closes": "17:30"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Friday",
      "opens": "08:30",
      "closes": "16:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "12:30"
    }
  ],
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/example-dental",
    "https://www.instagram.com/example_dental"
  ]
}
</script>

A few details in that block are easy to get wrong:

• Telephone is written in international format with the leading zero dropped. The visible page can show 0114 496 0321; both describe the same number.
• addressCountry is the two-letter code GB, not "UK" and not "United Kingdom". GB is the ISO 3166 code used for the whole United Kingdom, Northern Ireland included.
• addressRegion is optional in the UK. Include a county only if you show it on the page and it is part of how you write your address.
• Sunday is simply absent. Days not listed are read as closed; you do not need to spell that out for a normal week.
• hasMap should be the link to your own place in Google Maps. Replace the placeholder with the share link from your listing, or leave the field out.

Opening hours that parse, including the awkward ones

Hours are where most blocks fail quietly. The old openingHours text property, such as "Mo-Fr 09:00-17:00", is valid schema.org, but it is easy to mistype and cannot express exceptions. Use openingHoursSpecification with 24-hour times and full English day names.

A Christmas closure, for example, looks like this inside the array:

{
  "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
  "opens": "00:00",
  "closes": "00:00",
  "validFrom": "2026-12-25",
  "validThrough": "2026-12-26"
}

Connecting the block to everything else: @id, url and sameAs

A LocalBusiness block that stands alone describes a business. One that carries a stable identifier and points to your other profiles describes your business, and lets other blocks on your site refer back to it.

@id

Give the business a permanent identifier: your homepage address followed by a fragment, such as https://example.co.uk/#practice. It is not a page a visitor opens; it is a name. Use exactly the same string everywhere the business is mentioned in markup, for example as the provider of a Service block or the publisher of an article. Change it once and every reference breaks.

url

The page that best represents this location. For a single-location business that is usually the homepage. For a branch it is the branch page, not the homepage.

sameAs

A list of profile addresses that are definitely this business: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, a trade body membership page, a Companies House entry if you want to point at it. Keep the list short and accurate. A directory listing that shows an old address should be corrected before it goes into sameAs, not after. Checking what those listings say is the job of the NAP consistency guide, and this guide assumes that work is done.

geo

Take the coordinates from your pin in Google Maps: right-click the entrance and the first item in the menu is the latitude and longitude, which copies when clicked. Google recommends at least five decimal places. Put the point on the customer entrance, not the middle of the building or the car park behind it.

Where the markup comes from on common platforms

Before you add anything, find out what already writes structured data on your site. Duplicated or conflicting LocalBusiness blocks are a common outcome of adding a plugin on top of a theme that already had one.

WordPress

Yoast SEO outputs Organization or Person in its schema graph; LocalBusiness comes from its paid Local SEO add-on. Rank Math has a Local SEO setting that switches the site entity to a LocalBusiness type with address and hours, with multi-location support in its paid tier. Some themes and page builders add their own block too. Pick one source, fill it in completely and switch off the others. If you hand-code instead, add the JSON-LD through a small site-specific plugin or the theme's header hook, not by pasting into a post.

Shopify

Most themes output Organization and WebSite on the homepage and Product on product pages, but not LocalBusiness. A shop with a physical counter can add a snippet to theme.liquid, guarded so it only renders on the homepage or a store page, or use a schema app. Check the rendered source afterwards; some apps inject a second Organization.

Wix and Squarespace

Both builders fill in some business information automatically. Wix lets you add custom structured data to a page in its SEO settings. Squarespace supports code injection on plans that include it. In both cases, view the published page source first so you do not end up with a second, contradictory block.

Custom sites and frameworks

Generate the block from the same data that fills the visible contact details, and output it with a JSON encoder: json_encode() in PHP, JSON.stringify() in JavaScript, json.dumps() in Python. In Next.js or Nuxt, render it on the server so it is present in the initial HTML rather than added after hydration.

Validator messages and what they usually mean

About ratings in LocalBusiness markup

Since 2019 Google has not shown review rich results for reviews a business publishes about itself on its own site when the item is a LocalBusiness or Organization. You can still include aggregateRating if the page genuinely shows those reviews, but do not expect stars from it, and never mark up ratings copied from Google, Trustpilot or another platform. The rules for review markup in general are covered by the review schema guide.

The fix, step by step

Keeping it right after today

• One source of truth. The markup, the footer and the contact page should all read from the same settings or data file. If someone edits the phone number in one place, all three change.
• Re-test after redesigns and plugin changes. Theme switches are the most common way a working block disappears or gets duplicated.
• Diary the hours. Bank holidays, Christmas and summer closures are when markup and reality drift apart. Update the page, the markup and the Business Profile together.
• Keep sameAs honest. When you close a social account or leave a trade body, take the link out.
• More than one branch? Each branch needs its own block on its own page. That pattern is set out in the multi-location guide.