LocalBusiness Schema: The 15-Minute Setup That Fixes AI's Facts

LocalBusiness schema is a block of machine-readable JSON on your website that states your business facts — name, address, phone, hours, category — in a format both Google and AI systems parse directly. It's the difference between AI inferring your hours from a paragraph and AI knowing them.

What it fixes

Schema markup attacks the most common AI visibility failures:

• Wrong hours / phone / address in AI answers — schema pins them down.
• Wrong category ("is this a restaurant or a caterer?") — the schema type declares it.
• Hedged answers — consistent structured data raises the model's confidence enough to answer instead of refusing.

It's also what makes you eligible for rich results in classic Google Search, so it pulls double duty.

The template

Put this in a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag on your homepage (and ideally every page), edited to your facts:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Plumber",
  "name": "Riverside Plumbing Co.",
  "image": "https://riversideplumbing.com/storefront.jpg",
  "url": "https://riversideplumbing.com",
  "telephone": "+15125550138",
  "priceRange": "$$",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "4820 Burnet Rd",
    "addressLocality": "Austin",
    "addressRegion": "TX",
    "postalCode": "78756",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "geo": { "@type": "GeoCoordinates", "latitude": 30.317, "longitude": -97.739 },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
      "opens": "07:00",
      "closes": "19:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
      "opens": "08:00",
      "closes": "17:00"
    }
  ],
  "areaServed": ["Austin TX", "Round Rock TX", "Cedar Park TX"],
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.facebook.com/riversideplumbing",
    "https://g.page/riversideplumbing"
  ]
}

Three details people get wrong

1. Use the most specific type. Plumber, Dentist, Restaurant, HairSalon — not the generic LocalBusiness — whenever schema.org has your category. Specific types answer the "what kind of business is this" question outright.
2. Match your Google Business Profile exactly. Same name spelling, same address format, same phone. Disagreements between your schema and your GBP are exactly the inconsistency that makes AI hedge. See why AI gets your business info wrong.
3. Real hours, including the weird ones. Closed Tuesdays? Split lunch hours? Encode them. "Is it open right now" is one of the most-asked AI questions.

Validate it

Paste your page URL into Google's Rich Results Test, or just run a free Scout scan — schema validity and completeness is one of the five checks in your grade, and the report shows exactly which fields are missing. Scout Starter generates the block for you, typed to your industry.