Choosing Your LocalBusiness Type

TLDR; You need to decide right at the beginning of writing structured data for your website what type of LocalBusiness or Organization you are. You need to use the most specific and relevant one to your business for optimal results. 

One of the first things you need to do when deciding to write structured data for your business is to work out what type of LocalBusiness you are.

There are hundreds of different types to choose from, and it’s best practice to choose the most specific for your business.

Google’s guidelines state:

Define each local business location as a LocalBusiness type. Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible; for example, Restaurant, DaySpa, HealthClub, and so on.

Google LocalBusiness guidelines

For example, if you are a car wash, you’d want to choose the type AutoWash instead of the more generic LocalBusiness, as that helps search engines to understand more clearly what your business actually offers. LocalBusiness is a type of Organization (which is even more generic).

Most e-commerce businesses who operate online will want to choose the type OnlineStore which is a type of Organization, not LocalBusiness, so it has different guidelines.

How To Choose Your LocalBusiness Type

Each of these local business have specific properties which are relevant to that business. See if you can find your business in the lists below.

Automotive Businesses

See below for the different types of automotive businesses which have their own specific types:

• • AutomotiveBusiness
    • • AutoBodyShop – body repair centre
      • AutoDealer – car sales showroom / car dealer
      • AutoPartsStore – car parts shop e.g. Euro Car Parts
      • AutoRental – car rental e.g. Avis
      • AutoRepair – garages
      • AutoWash – car wash
      • GasStation – petrol station
      • MotorcycleDealer – motorbike showroom / dealer
      • MotorcycleRepair – motorbike repair / garage

Entertainment Businesses

There are a few types of entertainment business available to choose from:

• • EntertainmentBusiness
    • • AdultEntertainment – strip club, over 18’s adult-themed entertainment
      • AmusementPark – theme park
      • ArtGallery
      • Casino
      • ComedyClub
      • MovieTheater – cinema
      • NightClub – nightclub or disco

Financial Services

These are split into four different types:

• • FinancialService
    • • AccountingService – accountant
      • AutomatedTeller – cash machine / ATM
      • BankOrCreditUnion – bank
      • InsuranceAgency – insurance brokers or insurance companies

Food Businesses

There are many types of food businesses, so hopefully one of these covers your business:

• • FoodEstablishment
    • • Bakery – baker
      • BarOrPub
      • Brewery
      • CafeOrCoffeeShop
      • Distillery
      • FastFoodRestaurant
      • IceCreamShop
      • Restaurant
      • Winery

One of the types I’ve found that this doesn’t cover is food manufacturers, and there isn’t really a category for manufacturer or factory.

Health and Beauty Businesses

There are a few types that you can use:

• • HealthAndBeautyBusiness
    • • BeautySalon – generic beauty salon
      • DaySpa
      • HairSalon
      • HealthClub – a generic health club (not to be confused with gym which is ExerciseGym)
      • NailSalon
      • TattooParlor – tattoo shop

Tradesmen, Construction and Building Businesses

These are quite generic, and tradespeople looking for a category may need to use GeneralContractor if there isn’t one here that fits:

• • HomeAndConstructionBusiness
    • • Electrician
      • GeneralContractor – used for everything that doesn’t fit into one of the other types
      • HVACBusiness – Heating, ventilation and air conditioning services
      • HousePainter
      • Locksmith
      • MovingCompany
      • Plumber
      • RoofingContractor

Legal Services Businesses

There are only two types of specific legal business, so if you’re not a lawyer or notary, then use LegalService.

• • LegalService
    • • Attorney – lawyer – however this type is deprecated and schema.org recommends using LegalService
      • Notary

Accommodation Businesses

If you’re running a hotel, camp site or AirBnB, there are categories to help you provide a more specific type than just AccommodationBusiness.

• • LodgingBusiness
    • • BedAndBreakfast
      • Campground
      • Hostel
      • Hotel
      • Motel
      • Resort – Places, towns or sometimes commercial establishments operated by a single company, like Disneyland or a Hotel Resort
        • • SkiResort
      • VacationRental – AirBnB

Other Professional Services

This used to be used for all the different types which were then separated due to confusion with the type Service. Schema.org’s website states that these were the old professions listed under this type:

Dentist, AccountingService, Attorney, Notary, as well as types for several kinds of HomeAndConstructionBusiness: Electrician, GeneralContractor, HousePainter, Locksmith, Plumber, RoofingContractor. LegalService was introduced as a more inclusive supertype of Attorney.

• • ProfessionalService – if you’re a professional and can’t find another type then use this type
  • RealEstateAgent – Estate agent
  • TravelAgency – Travel agent

Retail and Shops

There are lots of different types of stores to choose from here. Unless you are a shopping centre (in which case use ShoppingCenter), hopefully your shop will fit into one of these categories:

• • Store
    • • AutoPartsStore – car parts shop
      • BikeStore
      • BookStore
      • ClothingStore – see also MensClothingStore below
      • ComputerStore
      • ConvenienceStore – small supermarket
      • DepartmentStore
      • ElectronicsStore
      • Florist
      • FurnitureStore
      • GardenStore
      • GroceryStore – supermarket
      • HardwareStore
      • HobbyShop
      • HomeGoodsStore
      • JewelryStore – Jewellers
      • LiquorStore – Off licence
      • MensClothingStore
      • MobilePhoneStore
      • MovieRentalStore
      • MusicStore
      • OfficeEquipmentStore
      • OutletStore
      • PawnShop
      • PetStore
      • ShoeStore
      • SportingGoodsStore
      • TireShop – Tyre centre
      • ToyStore
      • WholesaleStore – such as Bookers

If Your Business Is More Than One Type

If your business is more than one type, for example you are a handyperson and offer plumbing, locksmith and electrical services, you need to use an array.

Unlike with Organization, the property additionalType is not supported for LocalBusiness.

An array looks like this, contained in square brackets:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": ["Electrician", "Plumber", "Locksmith"],
  "name": "Kelly's Handyperson Services",
}

A common mistake people make when writing structured data for the first time, is trying to add the types like this:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Electrician", 
  "@type": "Plumber", 
  "@type": "Locksmith",
  "name": "Kelly's Handyperson Services",
}

which doesn’t work.

Also bear in mind that you should only mark up the types that are directly relevant to your business.

What If You Can’t Find a LocalBusiness Type?

If you can’t find a LocalBusiness type which is relevant to your business, then you’ll need to use the most generic type which is LocalBusiness.

You can however, help search engines understand more about what you do using Wikipedia and something called Product Ontology. Note that this isn’t directly supported by Google, however it could still be useful in the future.

To do this, search Wikipedia for your business type, for example if you are an Osteopath, there isn’t really a LocalBusiness type that you can use. You have these choices on Schema.org:

• • MedicalOrganization
    • • Dentist
      • DiagnosticLab
      • Hospital
      • MedicalClinic
      • Pharmacy
      • Physician
      • VeterinaryCare
  • LocalBusiness
    • • MedicalBusiness
        • • CommunityHealth
          • Dentist
          • Dermatology
          • DietNutrition
          • Emergency
          • Geriatric
          • Gynecologic
          • MedicalClinic
            • • CovidTestingFacility
          • Midwifery
          • Nursing
          • Obstetric
          • Oncologic
          • Optician
          • Optometric
          • Otolaryngologic
          • Pediatric
          • Pharmacy
          • Physician
            • • IndividualPhysician
              • PhysiciansOffice
          • Physiotherapy
          • PlasticSurgery
          • Podiatric
          • PrimaryCare
          • Psychiatric
          • PublicHealth

None of these really fit with an Osteopath. There is a schema.org Enumeration Member for Osteopathic, but that’s a property of MedicineSystem, so it’s not what we need.

Search Wikipedia and and find the page most relevant to your business, in this case Osteopathy. You need to take the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathy and remove the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ part, just leaving Osteopathy. Then add this URL to the beginning:

http://www.productontology.org/id/

Note that it’s http not https for the URL.

We need to choose the next nearest type that we can, which is MedicalBusiness. We can then create an additionalType, using Product Ontology and Wikipedia like this:

"@type": "MedicalBusiness",
"additionalType": "http://www.productontology.org/id/Osteopathy",

You can read more about Product Ontology on their website. It’s great for marking up e-commerce websites and also adding additionalType to many things such as Product, Service and Organization.