Google announces updates to Organisation structured data

Structured data (also known as Schema) can be added to your site to help search engines better understand the content on your website. There are many different types of schema you can add to your website to help search engines, an exhaustive list of the different types is available to view on the Schema website.

Organisation schema (make sure that you type it in with the US spelling not the UK spelling as search engines won’t be able to understand the schema) tells search engines like Google that the website represents an organisation. Since 2013, Google has supported logo structured data within Organisation schema, with this new update you can now include more fields including:

• Address (Postal address and Locality)
• Contact details (Phone number and email address)
• Number of employees
• VAT ID
• Tax ID
• SameAs (which enables you to tell search engines any other references online to your business for example your social media platforms)

You can see additional fields you can add to the Organisation schema on your site within Google’s documentation.

This data has been updated within ‘LocalBusiness’ schema for a long time, however, you can now add these details to the Organisation schema on your site, Google still recommends that you add ‘LocalBusiness’ schema to your site.

What should I do if my business is just online?

Google recommends the ‘OnlineBusiness’ Organisation subtype if you’re an online business. If you’ve got an eCommerce site it’s recommended that you use the Organisation subtype of ‘OnlineStore’.

How can I check the fields in my schema are set up correctly?

Once you’ve updated your Organisation schema there are a few tools that you can use to check if the schema is valid and can be understood by search engines, there are the following tools available:

• Schema Markup Validator
• Rich Results Test

Both of these tools are recommended by Google to check if the schema on your site is correct.