Service schema markup generator

Service describes something a business does for customers, as distinct from the business itself. It produces no rich result, and it is frequently used where LocalBusiness or Product would be the better answer.

Reference copy unfinished. The generator below works and produces valid markup. The explanatory sections are still being written, so this page is not listed for search engines yet.

Google Search features this type can produce

From the registry

No Google Search feature maps to this type. The markup is valid schema.org and describes the page correctly, but it does not produce a rich result of its own. Add it for the description, not for a visible change in the results — and treat any guide promising one with suspicion.

Meeting a feature’s documented requirements does not guarantee that the feature appears. No tool can promise that, and any that does is describing something it cannot know.

Generate the markup

Runs in your browser

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Service",
  "name": "Emergency boiler repair",
  "areaServed": [
    "London",
    "Surrey"
  ],
  "provider": {
    "@type": "LocalBusiness",
    "name": "Marlow Road Heating"
  },
  "serviceType": "Emergency plumbing"
}
</script>

Paste this into the <head> of the page it describes. Markup that describes a page must live on that page.

Service, LocalBusiness or Product

These three get confused constantly. LocalBusiness describes the organisation and its premises: name, address, opening hours. Service describes an offering: plumbing, tax returns, dog walking. Product describes a thing you can buy, and a service sold at a fixed price with a checkout behaves far more like a Product than most people expect.

The practical test is what the page is about. A page about your business is a LocalBusiness. A page about one thing your business does is a Service, attached to the business through provider. A page where someone buys a defined package at a stated price is closer to a Product, and Product has features available to it that Service does not.

What Service does and does not do

There is no Service rich result. Adding Service markup will not change how the page appears. What it does is state plainly what the offering is, who provides it and where it is available, which is useful description and worth doing for that reason rather than a hoped-for feature.

areaServed is the property most worth filling in and most often left out. A service business operating across three counties that says so is describing something a consumer cannot work out from an address.

Mistakes worth avoiding

A Service page with no provider

A service with nobody providing it describes an abstraction. Link it to the LocalBusiness or Organization that delivers it, ideally by @id.

Listing every service on one page

One Service entity per service. A page listing twelve services is a collection, and marking it as one Service misdescribes it.

Expecting a rich result

There is not one. Add Service because it describes the page, not because a guide promised stars.

Check what you already have

If the page you are marking up already carries structured data, audit it before adding more. Duplicate entities from a theme and a plugin are the most common finding on established sites, and adding a third block makes it worse rather than better.

Check a page