Service schema

A trade business often offers several services at once: new installation, maintenance, emergency call-outs. A tax firm advises private individuals as well as companies on very different matters. Service schema gives each individual offer its own machine-readable description instead of bundling everything into a single, generic business entry.

What service schema describes

The Schema.org type Service represents a single service, with properties such as serviceType (the kind of service, for example "heating maintenance"), provider (which business offers it), areaServed (the service area, for example a town or a district) and optionally offers for a price or price range. Embedded as JSON-LD, these building blocks can be set for each service individually.

How it differs from LocalBusiness schema

LocalBusiness schema describes the business as a whole: name, address, opening hours, contact details. Service schema describes a single service of that business. The two complement each other: a LocalBusiness entry can point to several service entries via hasOfferCatalog, making it clear which business offers which specific services, rather than just "something to do with trades".

Why this matters beyond rankings

When someone asks a search engine or an AI search system about a specific service, for example "which electrician offers weekend emergency call-outs in Fürstenfeldbruck", the answer needs more than a company name. It needs the mapping: this service, this service area, this provider. Structured service data supplies exactly that mapping in machine-readable form, instead of leaving it to be guessed from the body text.

Practical note

As with any structured data type, technically correct markup is a prerequisite, not a guarantee of any particular display in the search results. Google's free Rich Results Test checks whether the service markup is valid and whether it is eligible for rich results at all.