LocalBusiness Schema Types: Which @type Fits Your Business

Picking the right @type is the one decision in LocalBusiness schema that most sites get lazy about: they copy a snippet that says LocalBusiness and stop. The subtype is a free category signal. Dentist tells a crawler what a page is about in one token; LocalBusiness tells it only that a business exists. This guide maps the schema.org subtypes to real industries, including the ones we build citations for, and explains what to do when no subtype exists.

How the LocalBusiness hierarchy works

LocalBusiness sits under both Organization and Place in schema.org, which is why it can carry an address and opening hours as well as a name and a phone. Beneath it are parent groups (MedicalBusiness, HomeAndConstructionBusiness, FoodEstablishment, LegalService, FinancialService, AutomotiveBusiness, LodgingBusiness, HealthAndBeautyBusiness, SportsActivityLocation, Store, ProfessionalService) and, under most of those, specific leaves such as Plumber or Restaurant.

The rule for choosing: go as deep as is true. A leaf when one exists, otherwise the parent group, otherwise LocalBusiness. Everything else in the block (the address, telephone, openingHoursSpecification and the rest from the complete LocalBusiness schema guide) stays the same whatever type you choose.

The map: industries to schema types

We build citations across 45 industries, so we keep a working map of which schema type each one should use. Types are quoted from the schema.org vocabulary as we read it at the time of writing; it grows, so re-check the site before relying on a type you have not seen used.

Industry	Recommended @type	Notes
Dentists, orthodontists	Dentist	Under MedicalBusiness; practitioner pages can add Physician-style person markup separately
Doctors, clinics	Physician or MedicalClinic	Specialties such as Dermatology, Pediatric, PrimaryCare exist as subtypes
Chiropractors	MedicalBusiness + medicalSpecialty	No dedicated leaf; state the specialty in the property
Therapists, counselors	MedicalBusiness or Psychiatric	Use Psychiatric only for psychiatric practices; counselors stay on the parent
Physiotherapists	Physiotherapy	A different category from talk therapy
Veterinarians	VeterinaryCare	Under MedicalBusiness
Pharmacies	Pharmacy
Law firms, attorneys	LegalService or Attorney	Notary also exists
Accountants	AccountingService	Under FinancialService
Financial advisors	FinancialService
Insurance agents	InsuranceAgency	The agency is the entity, not the carrier
Real estate agents	RealEstateAgent	One entity per agent, team or brokerage
Restaurants	Restaurant	Siblings: Bakery, CafeOrCoffeeShop, FastFoodRestaurant, IceCreamShop, Winery, Brewery
Bars and pubs	BarOrPub
Caterers	FoodEstablishment	No Caterer leaf; pair with areaServed
Hotels	Hotel	Siblings: BedAndBreakfast, Hostel, Motel, Resort, VacationRental
Plumbers	Plumber	Under HomeAndConstructionBusiness
Electricians	Electrician
HVAC companies	HVACBusiness
Contractors, home builders	GeneralContractor	RoofingContractor and HousePainter exist for those trades
Locksmiths	Locksmith
Moving companies	MovingCompany
Landscapers, cleaners, pest control	HomeAndConstructionBusiness	No dedicated leaves; DryCleaningOrLaundry is for laundries only
Salons and spas	HairSalon, BeautySalon, NailSalon, DaySpa	Med spas offering medical treatments fit MedicalClinic better
Gyms	ExerciseGym or HealthClub	Under SportsActivityLocation
Yoga studios	ExerciseGym or SportsActivityLocation	No YogaStudio leaf
Auto repair	AutoRepair	Under AutomotiveBusiness; AutoBodyShop, AutoWash exist
Car dealerships	AutoDealer	Model the service department as its own entity if it has its own profile
Florists	Florist	Under Store
Childcare	ChildCare
Architects, IT services, marketing agencies, security	ProfessionalService or LocalBusiness	No dedicated leaves; add additionalType
Photographers, wedding vendors	LocalBusiness	No dedicated leaf; describe the specialty in description and additionalType
Taxi and car services	LocalBusiness	TaxiService is a Service type, not a business; attach it via makesOffer if you want it
Driving schools	LocalBusiness	Some sites use an education type; keep the local one for the map-pack entity
Travel agencies	TravelAgency
Self storage	SelfStorage

Where a row says “no dedicated leaf”, it is not a gap you should fill by inventing a name. "@type": "PestControl" validates as an unknown type and is ignored. Use the parent and add additionalType with a URL that describes the specialty, or put it in description.

Matching the type to your Google category

Google Business Profile has thousands of categories; schema.org has far fewer business types. Pick the schema type that best matches your primary Google category, and let the granular detail live where each system expects it: Google’s services and secondary categories on the profile, description, knowsAbout or makesOffer in the schema. The two do not need to be word-for-word identical; they need to describe the same business. If your profile’s primary category is “Emergency plumber”, your schema is Plumber with 24-hour openingHoursSpecification, not a made-up EmergencyPlumber.

One type or several

@type accepts an array, so a place that is genuinely a Bakery and a CafeOrCoffeeShop can say both. The test is whether both are true of the same entity at the same address with the same phone. When they are not, you have two entities: a dealership’s sales floor and its service centre, a hotel and its restaurant, a clinic and the individual doctors in it. Each gets its own block, its own @id and, usually, its own Google profile, exactly as they get their own citations. The multi-entity patterns are in the complete schema guide; the reasoning behind one-entity-per-profile is in the franchise SEO playbook.

Why the type is worth getting right

The type is the first thing a validator, a crawler or an AI assistant reads about your block. It decides which properties are expected, which rich results the page is eligible for, and how confidently a model can say “this is a dentist in Austin” rather than “this is some business in Austin”. It costs one word. Check yours with the tools in how to validate LocalBusiness schema, then check that the block’s name, address and phone agree with your listings using the free NAP checker, which reads your site’s JSON-LD directly. The industry-by-industry context for where schema sits in the wider plan is in our local SEO guides.