“Will schema markup get me stars on Google?” For your own business, no. Google stopped showing review stars for a business’s own pages when the business controls the reviews about itself, and it has said so in writing since 2019. Anyone selling you markup on the promise of gold stars next to your website is selling something Google’s rules rule out.
That does not make structured data useless. It is a small, honest job that takes an afternoon, and it is worth doing right once. Here is what it is, what it can do, what it cannot, and the fields worth filling in.
What structured data is
Structured data is a block of code on a page, in a format such as JSON-LD (the one Google’s own examples use), that labels facts in a way a machine can read: this is the business name, this is the address, these are the hours. Visitors never see it. The labels come from a shared vocabulary at schema.org.
Google’s documentation for local business markup describes what it is for: “With Local Business structured data, you can tell Google about business hours, different departments within a business, reviews (if your site captures reviews about other businesses), and more.” It says search results “may display” a knowledge panel with details about a business, or a carousel of businesses. And it says plainly: “Google does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results.”
Why your own reviews will not become stars
Google’s review snippet guidelines say it directly: “If the entity that’s being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, their pages that use LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data are ineligible for star review feature.” The example Google gives is a review about a business placed on that business’s own website, “either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget (for example, Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews widget).”
That rule dates from a Google post of September 16, 2019, headed “Self-serving reviews aren’t allowed for LocalBusiness and Organization.” Google’s local business page now lists the rating and review fields as recommended only “for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses”, meaning review sites, not the business itself.
The same guidelines add two more rules worth knowing before you install a reviews plugin: “Don’t aggregate reviews or ratings from other websites,” and don’t include fake reviews or incentivized reviews that do not clearly disclose the incentive. Self-serving reviews alone do not bring a manual action, Google’s 2019 post says; those pages simply show no stars. Breaking the other structured data guidelines can bring one. Google’s general guidelines say what that costs: the page “loses eligibility for appearance as a rich result; it doesn’t affect how the page ranks in Google web search.” Nothing in these rules stops you showing reviews on your site for people to read; it is marking them up as your own rating that earns nothing.
Reviews still matter in Google, just not as markup: Google’s local ranking page, below, says prominence is based partly on how many reviews you have, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. Asking for Google Reviews covers getting more of them within Google’s and the FTC’s rules.
It is not how the map results are ranked
Google’s help page on local ranking says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity,” and that “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” Its advice is about the Business Profile: complete and accurate information, verification, hours, replying to reviews, photos. It adds that prominence also draws on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. Structured data is not on the page. If the map results are the goal, start with the Business Profile setup, not the markup.
Pick the most specific type
Google says to use “the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible.” For contractors, schema.org has a type made for you. It describes HomeAndConstructionBusiness as “a LocalBusiness that provides services around homes and buildings,” and lists eight more specific types under it: Electrician, GeneralContractor, HVACBusiness, HousePainter, Locksmith, MovingCompany, Plumber and RoofingContractor.
So a plumbing company uses Plumber, and a fence builder, a handyman or a gutter company, with no narrower type of its own, uses HomeAndConstructionBusiness.
The fields worth filling in
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| name | Required. The business name exactly as it appears on your Business Profile, truck and invoices. |
| address | Required by Google. “The physical location of the business. Include as many properties as possible.” See the note below if you work from home. |
| url | The full web address of the business location. Google: “The URL must be a working link.” |
| telephone | The number meant to be the main way customers reach you, with country and area code. |
| openingHoursSpecification | The days and hours you are open, the same hours your Business Profile shows. |
| priceRange | A range or a number of dollar signs. Google: it “must be shorter than 100 characters,” or no price range is shown. |
| geo | Latitude and longitude, at least five decimal places. Only if your address is public. |
| logo and sameAs | From Google’s Organization markup: your logo, and links to your profiles on social or review sites. |
If you work from home and hide your address. Google tells a business that does not serve customers at its address to remove that address from its Business Profile and enter only its service area, and a contractor working from home may keep the street address off the website too. Google lists the address as required for this markup, but its general guidelines also say: “Don’t mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page,” and “Your structured data must be a true representation of the page content.” Our reading: if your street address is not on the page, it does not belong in the markup either. Give the town, state and ZIP code the page does show, and leave out geo. Google does not say what, if anything, it shows for a partial address, so expect nothing beyond a correct description.
Schema.org offers more fields than Google reads, such as areaServed (“the geographic area where a service or offered item is provided”) and hasCredential, which could describe a license. They are harmless when true, but Google’s local business page does not list them, so do not expect them to change anything in Google’s results.
Where to put it, and how to check it
Three promises to turn down
If someone pitches schema work, measure the pitch against Google’s own pages:
What is left is modest and worth having: a clean, true description of your business that a machine can read, in place before anyone asks. Pair it with the pages people do read, covered in The Website Pages a Contractor Needs, and town pages that earn their place, in Service-Area Pages That Rank Without Spam.