On 15 September 2026 I fetched the home page of every business Google Maps put in its first ten for plumber, roofing company, HVAC company and electrician in Grand Rapids. Thirty-two of 39 carry some JSON-LD. Twenty-three declare a business type. The other sixteen rank anyway. Schema is not what gets a site into the map pack; it is how the site tells Google, without ambiguity, who it is once it is there.
Not to rank. Sixteen of the 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites declare no business-type node and seven carry no JSON-LD at all. All of them are in Google Maps' first ten for their trade regardless.
Yes to be understood. Google's documentation says structured data is how it understands page content and what makes a page eligible for rich results, and it states plainly that it does not guarantee those features will appear.
A LocalBusiness block with your name, address, phone, hours and the right sub-type is a small job, and it ships with every site we build. Add anything beyond it only when the page really contains that thing.
Every post on page one for this question says roughly the same thing: schema is not strictly required, but you should have it. None of them looked at a set of ranking sites to check. So I did, for the four trades that call me most, in the city I work in.
The set is the 40 businesses Google Maps ranked in its first ten for plumber, roofing company, HVAC company and electrician in Grand Rapids, read on the morning of 15 September 2026. Between 17:15 and 17:21 UTC that day I fetched each business's own home page once, with a plain HTTP request and no browser. One electrician's site timed out at twenty seconds and was not measured, which leaves 39. I then parsed every <script type="application/ld+json"> block in the served HTML and collected the @type values, including those nested inside a @graph.
Three counts matter for this question. Any JSON-LD means the page had at least one parseable block, of any type. A business-type node means one of those blocks declared LocalBusiness or a relevant sub-type: Plumber, RoofingContractor, HVACBusiness, Electrician, ElectricalContractor, HomeAndConstructionBusiness or ProfessionalService. FAQPage means a block of that type was present.
| Trade (sites measured) | Any JSON-LD | Business-type node | FAQPage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbers (10) | 8 of 10 | 5 of 10 | 3 of 10 |
| Roofers (10) | 8 of 10 | 6 of 10 | 3 of 10 |
| HVAC (10) | 10 of 10 | 7 of 10 | 0 of 10 |
| Electricians (9) | 6 of 9 | 5 of 9 | 2 of 9 |
| All four (39) | 32 of 39 | 23 of 39 | 8 of 39 |
Read the middle column. Twenty-three of 39 top-ranked sites tell Google what kind of business they are in structured data. Sixteen do not, and seven of those sixteen have no JSON-LD on the home page at all. Those sixteen were not found on page three; they were in the first ten of the map for their trade on the day I looked. Whatever put them there, it was not a LocalBusiness block.
The other thing the table shows is that the nine sites with JSON-LD but no business-type node are mostly carrying what a theme or plug-in emits by default: WebSite, WebPage, BreadcrumbList, Organization, an ImageObject. That is structured data in the technical sense and it is not nothing, but it does not say "this is a roofing contractor at this address with these hours."
First, the type list is what each page declares, not what Google accepts. A block can name a type and still be rejected for a missing required property or a guideline problem, and this sweep cannot see that. Second, two sites declared types that are not in schema.org's vocabulary at all ("Business" and "Corporation"). Those words were ignored; for one of the two it is the only type on the page, so that site sits among the sixteen despite plainly meaning to say what it is. Anything rendered by JavaScript after page load is also invisible here, since only the served HTML was read.
The vendor posts on page one agree that schema helps and disagree quietly about how. Google's own documentation is short and worth reading directly. Its structured-data introduction, read 15 September 2026, defines the thing in one sentence: "Structured data is a standardized format for providing information about a page and classifying the page content." On what Google does with it: "Google uses structured data that it finds on the web to understand the content of the page, as well as to gather information about the web and the world in general, such as information about the people, books, or companies that are included in the markup."
Then the payoff, which is presentation rather than position: "Adding structured data can enable search results that are more engaging to users and might encourage them to interact more with your website, which are called rich results." The same page recommends the format the whole sweep counted: "In general, Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data if your site's setup allows it," and it points at the free checker: "The Rich Results Test is an easy and useful tool for validating your structured data."
That page does not offer ranking as a benefit. The LocalBusiness page, also read 15 September 2026, is more direct in its troubleshooting section: "Google does not guarantee that features that consume structured data will show up in search results." Structured data makes a page eligible; the introduction warns that guideline violations mean "your structured data might be ineligible for rich result display in Google Search." Google's general structured data guidelines, read the same day, say it a third time: "Google does not guarantee that your structured data will show up in search results." Eligible is the strongest word Google uses, and the sixteen unmarked sites in the map pack are consistent with that.
The page-one posts, read the same day, mostly agree once you get past their titles. Fivenson Studios in Ann Arbor: "While schema markup is not a strict requirement for ranking in search results, it can significantly enhance how your site appears and performs." Stackra: "Schema is not a direct ranking factor in the way page speed or backlinks are." OnePoint Solutions goes further, "Every small business site needs it on the homepage," and offers no measurement for it. None of the three counted a set of real sites. Fivenson's only number is "According to some studies, rich snippets can improve click-through rates by 20–30% or more," with no study named; the closest Stackra gets is an unsourced "roughly 40% of all websites use any form of structured data," which is a different population from the one that ranks for a trade in a city.
Google's LocalBusiness documentation describes what the type is for: "When users search for businesses on Google Search or Maps, Search results may display a prominent Google knowledge panel with details about a business that matched the query." And: "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."
The property list on that page is the whole specification, and it is short. Two properties are required: name and address. The recommended properties are aggregateRating, department, geo (with latitude and longitude), menu, openingHoursSpecification, priceRange, review, servesCuisine, telephone and url. Menu and cuisine are for restaurants; for a trade the useful set is name, address, telephone, url, geo, opening hours and price range.
One instruction on that page is worth underlining: "Use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible; for example, Restaurant, DaySpa, HealthClub, and so on." For the four trades here the schema.org sub-types are Plumber, RoofingContractor, HVACBusiness and Electrician. All four sit under HomeAndConstructionBusiness, which sits under LocalBusiness, so declaring the specific type loses nothing and says more. A site that declares "Business" or "Corporation" has declared a word Google's vocabulary does not contain.
Google's general guidelines put it in one line: "Your structured data must be a true representation of the page content." In practice that means the block must agree with the page and with your Google Business Profile. Same name, same address format, same phone, same hours. A LocalBusiness block that says you open at 7 while the profile says 8 is not neutral; it is a second source of truth that contradicts the first. When we build a site, the block is generated from the same facts as the footer and the contact page, so they cannot drift apart.
Eight of the 39 also declare FAQPage: three plumbers, three roofers, two electricians and no HVAC company. For a trade site that type has not earned anything visible in years. Google's Search Central changelog, read 15 September 2026, has a September 14, 2023 entry: "Updated the FAQ structured data documentation to state that the feature is only shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites." This spring it went away for everyone. The same changelog carries an entry dated May 8, 2026 headed "Deprecating the FAQ rich result feature", whose reason line reads: "This feature will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026." An entry dated June 15, 2026, headed "Removing documentation for the FAQ rich result feature", gives its reason as: "The FAQ rich result feature is no longer shown in Google Search results, as announced in the changelog entry in May 2026." The FAQPage documentation address now redirects to that changelog. So eight of the 39 are carrying a block whose visible payoff Google withdrew from businesses like them three years ago and from everyone four months ago, which tells you how rarely these blocks get re-read once they are in.
The type is still an accurate description of a page that really lists questions and answers, and Google's general guidelines still govern it: "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page." This article carries a FAQPage block for the four questions at the bottom on exactly that basis. It earns nothing in search; it is simply true.
You do not need a tool to find out what your own site declares, and you should check the served page rather than trust a plug-in's settings screen. Two ways:
ld+json. Each hit is a structured-data block. Look for "@type" inside it: if you see LocalBusiness, Plumber, RoofingContractor, HVACBusiness or Electrician, you have a business-type node. If you only see WebSite, WebPage and BreadcrumbList, you have what the theme gave you and nothing about the business. If there are no hits, you are one of the seven.If the check turns up a block with the wrong phone number, an old address or an opening-hours line that no longer matches, that is worth fixing before anything else on this page. Wrong structured data is the one case where none would have been better.
Three questions, in order. Most businesses stop after the first.
Where this fits with what we sell: every site we build includes on-page SEO and local schema, whichever tier. The Starter Site ($999) includes on-page SEO and Google setup; the Business Site ($2,499) lists local schema, reviews and analytics; the Care Plan (from $199 a month) keeps the block and the profile matched after launch. If you already have a site and want to know what it declares alongside 190-odd other checks per page, the Site & Business Audit is $750 one-off, delivered as a written report within three business days. We build with AI and check the output against the served page, which is the only version Google reads.
Method. Forty businesses from four Google Maps lists (plumber, roofing company, HVAC company, electrician; Grand Rapids, MI; first ten each), read 15 September 2026. One HTTP fetch of each business's own home page between 17:15 and 17:21 UTC the same day, no retries, no JavaScript rendering. One site timed out and is excluded: 39 measured. Every application/ld+json block parsed; @type values collected including nested and @graph nodes. Counts reported per trade; businesses not named.
Pages quoted, all read 15 September 2026. Google Search Central, "Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search" (developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data). Google Search Central, "Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data" (developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/local-business). Google Search Central, "General structured data guidelines" (developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies). Google Search Central documentation changelog, FAQ rich result entries of September 2023, May 2026 and June 2026 (developers.google.com/search/updates). Fivenson Studios, "What Is Schema Markup (And Does Your Small Business Website Need It?)" (fivensonstudios.com). Stackra, "Schema Markup for Small Business Websites (2026 Guide)" (stackra.app). OnePoint Solutions, "Schema.org Markup for Small Business" (onepointsolution.ca).
Not on the evidence we have. Of the 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites we fetched on 15 September 2026, 16 declared no business-type node and 7 carried no JSON-LD at all, and every one of them was in Google Maps' first ten for its trade. Google's own documentation describes structured data as a way to understand page content and enable rich results, and says it does not guarantee that features which consume structured data will show up in search results.
Google's LocalBusiness documentation says to use the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible. Schema.org has Plumber, RoofingContractor, HVACBusiness and Electrician, all of them under HomeAndConstructionBusiness, which is itself a LocalBusiness. Whichever you pick, Google's page lists name and address as required and recommends telephone, url, geo, openingHoursSpecification and priceRange among others. The facts in the block must match what is on the page and in your Google Business Profile.
Open your home page, view the page source and search for application/ld+json. Anything inside that script tag is your structured data, and the @type values tell you what it declares. Or paste the URL into Google's free Rich Results Test at search.google.com/test/rich-results, which reads the page and reports what it found. Check the served page, not the editor: a plug-in that promises a block in the dashboard has not necessarily put one in the HTML.
Not for a rich result, because there is no longer one to earn. Google's Search Central changelog, read 15 September 2026, records a May 2026 entry deprecating the FAQ rich result feature, which stopped appearing in Google Search on 7 May 2026, and a June 2026 entry removing its documentation. Eight of the 39 top-ranked Grand Rapids trade sites still declare FAQPage, and none of the ten HVAC sites do. The type still accurately describes a page that visibly lists questions and answers, which is why this page carries one, but adding it will not change how you appear in search.
Send me your URL. I'll run the same check I ran on these 39 and reply with what your served page says, in plain words: which types it declares, whether the facts match your Google profile, and whether anything needs fixing.
Works whether or not you end up building with me.