A handful of types: Organization or the most specific LocalBusiness type, WebSite for your site name, BreadcrumbList, and Article on posts, plus Product or Event if you sell or host them. Keep every value identical to the visible page. FAQ and Service markup rarely earn anything from Google.
Most small businesses need only a handful of schema types: Organization, or the most specific LocalBusiness type that fits, on the home page; WebSite to indicate your site name; BreadcrumbList for page hierarchy; and Article or BlogPosting on posts. Add Product or Event markup only if you sell products or run events. Whatever you add must match what the page visibly shows. Most of the rest of the vocabulary does little for a typical service business.
Schema.org, the vocabulary both Google and Microsoft read, has more than 800 types, so schema advice tends to drown in completeness. Meanwhile Google has spent nearly three years retiring rich results that many guides still promise. Here is what earns its place on a typical business site, and what is decoration.
- of home pages carried structured data in the HTTP Archive's 2025 Web Almanac crawl
- 50%
- of home pages carried structured data in the HTTP Archive's 2025 Web Almanac crawl
- types in the schema.org vocabulary
- 800+
- types in the schema.org vocabulary
- of home pages used Organization markup, by the same count
- 26%
- of home pages used Organization markup, by the same count
- structured data features Google retired after one June 2025 announcement
- 6
- structured data features Google retired after one June 2025 announcement
01
What structured data actually does
Structured data is code, usually a block of JSON-LD in the page, that states facts a machine would otherwise have to infer from prose: this is a dental clinic, this is its address, these are its hours, this person wrote this article on this date. Google says the markup gives it explicit clues about a page's meaning and can make the page eligible for rich results, the enhanced listings with stars, prices or event dates. It recommends JSON-LD where your setup allows, and it does not guarantee that any enhancement will appear.
Where a rich result exists, the payoff can be real. Google's own case studies include Rotten Tomatoes measuring a 25% higher click-through rate on 100,000 pages with structured data, and Nestlé finding 82% higher click-through on pages shown as rich results. Microsoft goes further, and talks about AI directly.
Schema is a type of code that helps search engines and AI systems understand your content.
Google is more cautious. Its page on AI features says there is no special schema.org markup you need to add to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, only that your structured data should match the visible text. Read together, the message is consistent: markup helps machines read facts you have already published. It does not create relevance you have not earned.
02
The short list that earns its place
For a typical service business these types do nearly all the useful work. The last column is what Google says it does with each.
| Type | Use it when | What Google does with it |
|---|---|---|
| Organization, or a LocalBusiness subtype such as Dentist or Restaurant | Always, on the home page or one about page; use the local subtype if customers visit you | Helps tell your business apart from others, choose your logo and, for local types, show details such as hours |
| WebSite | Always, on the home page only | Indicates the site name you would like shown in results |
| BreadcrumbList | Your site has sections and sub-pages | Shows where a page sits in your site; on desktop only since January 2025 |
| Article or BlogPosting | You publish posts or guides | Can help show better titles, images and dates, and states the author |
| Product | You sell online | Makes product pages eligible to show price, availability, ratings and shipping |
| Event | You run classes, workshops or events | Can make events eligible for event listings in Search and Maps |
And the types to skip, or at least stop expecting anything from:
- FAQPage: since August 2023 Google shows FAQ rich results only for well-known, authoritative government and health sites. Microsoft still lists FAQ among the labels that help its AI understand content, so keep it where you have a genuine FAQ section, but expect nothing from Google.
- HowTo: Google stopped showing how-to rich results entirely in September 2023.
- Service: valid schema.org vocabulary, but Google lists no search feature for it. Describe each service clearly on its own page first.
- Review stars about yourself: not eligible at all, as the warning below explains.
03
Google keeps retiring the decorations
Many schema guides were written when more markup meant more decoration in the results. Google has been removing those displays steadily.
Aug 2023
FAQ rich results restricted
Shown only for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. How-to results limited to desktop.
Sept 2023
How-to rich results removed
Google stops showing them on desktop too, deprecating the feature.
Nov 2024
Sitelinks search box retired
The search box under some brand results disappears from 21 November.
Jan 2025
Breadcrumbs leave mobile results
Breadcrumb trails now appear only in desktop results.
June 2025
Seven features marked for removal
Including course info, claim review, estimated salary and vehicle listing. Six were gone by September; book actions was later kept. Google says rankings are not affected.
Jan 2026
Practice problem results retired
Google removes the documentation two months after its deprecation notice.
When it cut back FAQ and how-to results and retired the sitelinks search box, Google said unused markup causes no problems and need not be removed. So the lesson is not to strip your code. It is to stop choosing markup for the decoration it promises, and choose it because it states true facts you want every machine to read the same way.
04
The two failure modes
Markup that contradicts the page. Google's guidelines say structured data must be a true representation of the page content, and that you should not mark up content readers cannot see. Breaking them can make a page ineligible for rich results, and a structured data issue can lead to a manual action, which Google reports in Search Console.
Markup that contradicts the world. Google's Business Profile guidelines ask businesses to appear on Google as they are consistently represented and recognised in the real world, across signage, stationery and other branding. If your markup, profile and directory listings show three different phone numbers or spellings of your name, every system reading them has to guess which is right. Our guide to Business Profile mistakes covers the listing side.
05
Treat business facts like code
The fix for both failure modes is a single source of truth: one record of your legal and trading names, address, phone and WhatsApp numbers, hours and services. Generate your markup, footer, contact page and listings from it, or at least check them against it.
- Give the business one identifier, such as your home page URL followed by #organization, and reuse it wherever markup refers to the business, so every page describes the same entity.
- Place Organization markup on the home page or a single about page, as Google recommends, and LocalBusiness markup on the page for each location, rather than variations on every page.
- Use the most specific type available, such as Dentist rather than the generic LocalBusiness.
- On posts, mark up only the author's name in the name field and link it to a real profile page.
- When hours or numbers change, update the record first, then the site, then your Business Profile and directories.
What to do this month
- Run your home page and one service page through Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator.
- List every type you currently publish, and remove anything that describes content not on the page.
- Add or fix Organization or LocalBusiness, WebSite, BreadcrumbList and Article markup, in that order.
- Delete review markup about your own business.
- Compare the name, address, phone and hours in your markup with your Business Profile, and fix any mismatch.
- Check the structured data reports in Search Console after every site change.
Structured data is part of our SEO and AEO work, and a free audit is an easy way to get a second opinion on yours.