Organization schema: what to include and where

Organization schema is a JSON-LD block that states your company's name, website, logo, contact details, address and business identifiers in a form search engines read directly. Put it once, on your home page or your About page, not on every page. Google requires no property, so add the ones that are true for you, and make the logo at least 112x112 px at a crawlable URL.

What organization schema does

Organization structured data tells Google which company runs the site and how to tell it apart from others with a similar name. Google's Organization markup guide says it uses the markup to understand your administrative details and to pick the logo it shows in results and knowledge panels.

It won't earn you a rich result on its own, and it won't create a knowledge panel. How panels, Wikidata and the rest of the entity work fit together is covered in how to get a Google knowledge panel. This post is about the markup itself.

Which properties to include

Google lists no required properties and about twenty recommended ones. Most sites need fewer than half. Here is how I sort them.

Google calls vatID an important trust signal for users. If you sell online and have one, add it. For DUNS, LEI or GLN numbers, Google prefers iso6523Code, a prefix code joined to your number with a colon, such as 0060: for DUNS and 0199: for LEI.

Pick the most specific type that fits. Google's guide uses OnlineStore over OnlineBusiness for an ecommerce site as its example. A business that serves customers at a physical location should use a LocalBusiness subtype instead, with its own rules.

Skip properties you'd have to invent. An empty contactPoint or a placeholder phone number does more harm than leaving them out.

Where to put organization structured data

Put it on one page, either the home page or the page that describes the company. Google's guide says you don't need it on every page.

Many themes and SEO plugins print the full Organization block site-wide. That isn't an error, but it bloats every page and makes it easy for two plugins to print two conflicting blocks. If you want other pages to reference the company, as an Article's publisher for instance, give the node an @id on the home page and point to it:

"publisher": { "@id": "https://www.example.com/#organization" }

Whatever you choose, keep one source of truth. Two Organization blocks with different names or logos give Google two answers to the same question.

A full Organization JSON-LD example

This is the block I'd put on a small software company's home page. Replace every value with your own, and remove any line that doesn't apply.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#organization",
  "name": "Brightwell",
  "legalName": "Brightwell Software GmbH",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/brand/logo-512.png",
  "description": "Scheduling software for physiotherapy clinics.",
  "email": "hello@example.com",
  "telephone": "+49-30-555-0142",
  "foundingDate": "2018-03-01",
  "vatID": "DE123456789",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "Torstrasse 100",
    "addressLocality": "Berlin",
    "postalCode": "10119",
    "addressCountry": "DE"
  },
  "contactPoint": {
    "@type": "ContactPoint",
    "contactType": "customer support",
    "telephone": "+49-30-555-0143",
    "email": "support@example.com"
  },
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/brightwell",
    "https://github.com/brightwell"
  ]
}

Place it in a <script type="application/ld+json"> tag in the page's HTML. If JSON-LD itself is new to you, start with what JSON-LD is. Which profiles belong in sameAs, and why a Wikidata item helps, is in the knowledge panel post linked above.

Logo schema rules

The logo property is what Google reads when it picks your logo in search, so get it right. Google's rules are short.

1. Use an image at least 112x112 px.
2. Host it at a URL Googlebot can crawl and index. A logo under a path that robots.txt blocks won't be used.
3. Use a format Google Images supports. PNG, JPG, SVG and WebP are all safe choices.
4. Check it on a pure white background. Google warns that light or gray logos can disappear there.

In practice I use a square PNG of 512 px or more, with the mark centered and some padding around it. Wide wordmarks get cropped or shrunk badly in small slots.

How to test organization schema

Run the page through a validator after every change. Google's Rich Results Test shows Organization markup it can read, and the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org checks the vocabulary. How to test structured data walks through both. Check the live URL, not just your template, because the CMS may add its own block next to yours.

Build organization schema for your site

The Organization schema generator builds the JSON-LD from details you type. It takes the name, legal and alternate names, URL, logo, description, email, telephone, sameAs profiles, founding date, taxID, vatID, street address and contact type. It returns Organization JSON-LD checked against the validator rules. Any sameAs entry that isn't a web address is left out, and the result tells you which.

Nothing is fetched, so you can draft the block before the page exists. A run costs 3 credits. Paste the output into your home page or About page and test the live URL.