Schema markup for local businesses in AI search

What JSON-LD does that prose doesn't

A LocalBusiness or Organization block of JSON-LD, placed in a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag on the page, states a business's name, phone and address as structured fact rather than as prose an engine has to parse and infer. A site check reads every JSON-LD block on the pages it fetches, looks for a LocalBusiness (or one of its subtypes — Dentist, Plumber, and so on all count) or Organization entry, and compares its name, telephone and address against the business's own profile — allowing for reasonable differences in formatting, such as “(512) 555-0142” matching “+15125550142”.

Missing schema doesn't make a site invisible, but it removes one of the more reliable facts an engine can lean on, and it's checked before anything else on the page: a homepage's JSON-LD is read as part of the very first fetch.

What gets flagged, specifically

Three separate, checkable things, not one pass/fail: whether a LocalBusiness or Organization block exists at all; whether its name matches; and whether its phone and address match. A business that has schema with an old address from a move, or a phone number a rebrand left behind, gets flagged for the mismatch even though schema is technically present — that's a real, common cause of an engine repeating outdated facts back to a customer.

A minimal, correct example

Naming the actual fields checked, not every optional property schema.org allows:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Bright Smile Dental",
  "telephone": "+15125550142",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "123 Main St",
    "addressLocality": "Austin",
    "addressRegion": "TX",
    "postalCode": "78701"
  }
}

FAQPage schema is a separate, worthwhile check

A site check looks for FAQPage schema (or a plain FAQ heading, which counts too) as its own item, since AI engines answer question-shaped prompts almost verbatim from FAQ content when they find it. It's unrelated to LocalBusiness schema and worth adding separately if a site has genuine, specific answers to give — not filler questions with no real content behind them.