Your website looks great. Machines can't read it.

Structured data is a block of code, invisible to the people visiting your website, that tells Google and AI assistants what your business is: name, address, opening hours, phone and prices, in a format a machine reads without guessing.

What exactly is structured data?

Google defines it as "a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content". A person knows that "open 9 to 2" is a set of opening hours. A machine knows it better when someone labels it: this is the name, this is the address, these are the hours for each day.

For a local business the type that matters is LocalBusiness. Google requires at least the name and the address, and recommends adding phone, website, coordinates, opening hours and price range.

Which format does nearly everyone use?

JSON-LD. It's the one Google recommends, because it's the easiest to add and to maintain. According to HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2024, JSON-LD appears on 41% of the pages analysed, up from 34% in 2022. It's the standard, and more sites adopt it every year.

How do I know if my website has it?

It takes five minutes:

• Open Google's Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results).
• Paste your home page address and select "Test URL".
• If "Local business" or "LocalBusiness" appears, you have it. Check the hours and phone are today's.
• If nothing appears, you don't. Now you know where to start.

What changes once it's in place?

Google explains that structured data can enable fuller search results, known as rich results. And an AI assistant looking for your opening hours finds them written down unambiguously, instead of inferring them from a photo or a PDF. There's more on this in what GEO is.

If you only have 10 minutes: run your website through Google's test. If "Local business" shows up with the right hours, you're done. If it doesn't, note it down: it's the first thing we fix in a website that sells.