Legal entity schema (Organization and LocalBusiness)

What the entity page is

An "entity" in SEO is a distinct, addressable thing: a person, organization, product, or place. The Organization schema type is the concrete way to mark up a business entity so Google can understand that this URL, this address, and these social profiles all refer to one company. It does not directly raise rankings, but it does three useful things: it disambiguates the entity from same-named competitors, it feeds the search result "attribution" surfaces (like a knowledge panel when the signals are strong), and it gives AI assistants a consistent reference for your business.

The formal rule from the schema world: use the most specific type that applies. A restaurant is a Restaurant (a subtype of LocalBusiness which is a subtype of Organization); an online shop is an OnlineStore; a professional firm is ProfessionalService. Do not mark everything as LocalBusiness just because it is a business.

The minimum Organization block

Google's current guidance for Organization schema says there are no required properties; add the ones that apply, and prefer accuracy over padding. The practical minimum:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org/",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Acme Web Ltd",
  "url": "https://acme.example",
  "logo": "https://acme.example/logo.png",
  "sameAs": [
    "https://www.linkedin.com/company/acme",
    "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Web"
  ]
}

The sameAs array is the disambiguation work of the entity. Each entry must be a real external profile (LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Wikidata, Crunchbase, a local directory). These links let Google confirm "the company on this site is the same entity as the company in these profiles". Without sameAs there is no way to tie the entity to its external footprint.

The legal-identifier properties

Google recognizes the administrative properties of Organization, most useful when the site belongs to a registered company:

Use these only when the value is real and factual, never invented for markup bulk. A guessed leiCode can make the entity mismatch its real identity.

Did you mean the site name, not the legal name?

The WebSite schema with name and a Publisher (Organization) is what attaches the site-level identity. The site name structured data guide is the pair for the WebSite piece. The typical setup is:

• One Organization block with the legal name, url, logo, sameAs on the homepage or About page.
• A WebSite block (with Publisher referencing the same @id) on the site-wide head, so the site name in Search shows the brand while the entity resolves to the legal one.

Common mistakes

1. over-marking every page with a full Organization. Google recommends once, on the homepage/About, not site-wide.
2. Using legalName for the visually-displayed name. name is the display brand; legalName is the registered name only when different.
3. Ghost sameAs. Linking to a directory profile that does not exist or is not the entity hurts more than helps; verification signals that fail are worse than none.
4. Ignoring the subtype. Marking a physical shop as plain Organization rather than LocalBusiness loses the address/hours surfaces the structured data guide describes.

Validate

Use Google's Rich Results Test (or the URL Inspection "Test live URL") to confirm the JSON-LD parses and the @id references resolve. The structured data types article has the broader table of which types still power surfaces in 2026; entity markup is the foundation the Product and Service pages build on.

When the entity is a person or a local business

• A local firm uses LocalBusiness subtype (e.g. ProfessionalService), plus address, openingHours and a geo when they apply. That's the route described in the ecommerce product SEO family for the address.
• A personal site uses Person with the @id of the person; the same sameAs rule applies for disambiguation.

A person or one-person business that only has a LinkedIn and a directory rarely needs a legal iso6523Code; a clean name, logo, url, and sameAs is more than enough. Add the legal identifiers when the entity is a registered company the search engine could otherwise confuse.