Local business schema: how to make your business facts easy for AI to read

Local business schema is a short block of code on a website that states a business's facts in a format search engines and AI tools read directly: the type of business, and its name, address, phone number and hours. Visitors never see it. It is one of the simplest ways to make a business's facts easy for AI to find, and research on how Google's AI builds answers says facts that are easy to extract are the ones that get used. In October 2026, Cobalt Bloom checked 95 small-business websites in Los Angeles: 56% had no business label, and only 25% had a complete one with the address, phone number and hours.

Updated: October 23, 2026. Written by Eric Levine, founder of Cobalt Bloom.

What are the key findings?

How did Cobalt Bloom check?

Cobalt Bloom read the business label on the home pages of 95 Los Angeles small-business websites and compared label use with being named by AI tools. The 95 are the sites from Cobalt Bloom's check of what AI tools find on small-business websites (https://getcobaltbloom.com/guides/what-ai-tools-find-on-small-business-websites): independent businesses in ten categories, picked at random from Google Maps. Each label's business type, address, phone number and hours were recorded, and the phone number was compared with the business's Google listing. For the comparison with being named, Cobalt Bloom checked the home pages of 411 businesses that ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI named in 100 "best [business] in [neighborhood]" searches, and 381 businesses they skipped (https://getcobaltbloom.com/guides/how-to-get-your-business-recommended-by-chatgpt). Gaps of a few points at this sample size point a direction rather than prove one.

Why does making business facts easy to read matter for AI?

AI answers are built from facts the AI can extract from a page. Mike King of the search agency iPullRank analyzed Google's patents on how AI Mode works and found that it "extracts chunks from relevant documents, builds structured representations of that information, and synthesizes a coherent answer," and that "some chunks are cited; many are not" (https://ipullrank.com/how-ai-mode-works). King writes that citation is "based on how directly a passage supports the generated response," and that "citation-worthy content must present facts clearly, avoid speculation, and include attributes like sources or structured claims." Google says structured data gives it "explicit clues about the meaning of a page" (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data). Local business schema is the most direct way to state business facts clearly; the phone number, address and hours should also be written in the page text.

What is local business schema?

Local business schema is a kind of structured data, the behind-the-scenes code that labels the facts on a page. It names the type of business using the closest match from schema.org, the shared vocabulary Google and other search engines use, such as Plumber, Dentist, Restaurant, HairSalon or AutoRepair, with LocalBusiness as the general type. It usually holds the type of business, business name, address, phone number, hours, website, and links to other profiles such as Yelp or Instagram. Google lists name and address as required, recommends phone number, website and hours, and says to use the most specific type possible (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/local-business).

What does local business schema look like?

Local business schema is a short JSON-LD block inside a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag in the page's code. A business owner does not need to read it; it is here to show a designer. This is a simple example for a made-up dental office, with each value to be replaced by the business's own:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dentist",
  "name": "Echo Park Family Dental",
  "url": "https://www.echoparkdental.com",
  "telephone": "+1-213-555-0142",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1234 Sunset Blvd",
    "addressLocality": "Los Angeles",
    "addressRegion": "CA",
    "postalCode": "90026",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
    "opens": "08:00",
    "closes": "17:00"
  }],
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.yelp.com/biz/echo-park-family-dental",
    "https://www.instagram.com/echoparkdental"
  ]
}
</script>

In this example, "@type": "Dentist" is the business type, telephone and address hold the phone number and full address, openingHoursSpecification holds the hours, and sameAs lists links to the business's other profiles, here Yelp and Instagram.

What should a local business schema label include?

  1. The most specific business type that fits, such as Plumber rather than LocalBusiness.
  2. The business name, exactly as it appears on the Google listing.
  3. The full address, with street, city, state and ZIP code.
  4. The phone number, the same one as on the Google listing.
  5. The opening hours.
  6. The website address and links to other profiles.

Every fact should match the website and the Google listing. Google says not to mark up information visitors cannot see on the page. A label that disagrees with the listing, like the 3 with a different phone number, gives search engines two answers to choose from. A business that works from home and does not show its address publicly should match whatever its Google listing shows.

How do you check a website's business label?

Use Google's free Rich Results Test, in three steps:

  1. Open Google's Rich Results Test at https://search.google.com/test/rich-results.
  2. Type in the website's address, for example www.yourbusiness.com, and press Test URL.
  3. Look for a local business item in the results. If there is none, the site has no business label Google can read. If there is one, open it and check the name, address, phone number and hours against the Google listing.

How do you add local business schema on each website platform?

How to add local business schema depends on what the site was built with; each platform's help page has the steps.

Wherever the label comes from, run the Rich Results Test afterward to make sure Google can read it. For a label added as part of a full website fix, see step 4 of how the Moss method works, at https://getcobaltbloom.com/blog/how-the-moss-method-works.

What should a small-business owner do first?

  1. Run the website through the Rich Results Test.
  2. If there is no business label, have one added with the specific business type, name, address, phone number and hours.
  3. If there is one, check every fact against the Google listing, especially the phone number.
  4. Make sure the same phone number, address and hours are written out on the home page.
  5. Keep the Google listing complete and reviews coming in; it showed the biggest gaps in Cobalt Bloom's tests.

Cobalt Bloom is being built to handle this for small businesses: business facts written clearly on every page, a business label that matches the Google listing, and a monthly check that both stay right. It has not launched yet; its waitlist is open at https://getcobaltbloom.com/#waitlist.

This is the AI-readable version of this guide. The page for people is at https://getcobaltbloom.com/guides/local-business-schema.