Guides

Your hours, prices and terms as data AI assistants can read

In short

Write who you are, where you are, your opening hours, what you offer with prices, and your cancellation and return terms as schema.org markup on pages linked from your homepage. Assistants compare on these before they book or buy.

What an assistant needs

An assistant compares before it books or buys. If your prices live in a photo of a menu, or your hours in a sentence on the contact page, it may skip you, or get them wrong. It reads data more reliably than prose:

  • Who and where: your name, address and opening hours, as LocalBusiness markup with the most specific type that fits (Restaurant, HairSalon, Dentist, Store and so on), and openingHoursSpecification for the hours.
  • What you offer, and for how much: each product, service or menu item with an Offer that has a price and a currency, on pages linked from your homepage.
  • Your terms: cancellation, deposit, no-show and returns, in plain words next to the button that books or buys and on a policy page your pages link to, with MerchantReturnPolicy markup for returns.
  • How payment works: paymentAccepted in your business markup (more in payments).

We read your homepage and up to three more of your own pages about what you offer, so link your services, menu or products from the homepage.

Your kind of business

The score weighs what matters for your kind of business: a salon on bookings, a shop on orders, a trade on quotes. We tell your kind from the most specific type in your own markup, or from the category you give when you claim your listing. A live checkout for agents, or three or more priced products in your markup, makes a site a shop.

Without any of these we score a business of unknown kind, as most sites are today, and count booking, ordering and signing up there as one. To be scored for what you are, add the most specific LocalBusiness or Organization type to your homepage’s markup, or claim your listing and give your category.

What counts in the check

  • Who and where: LocalBusiness markup with your name, address and openingHoursSpecification. Selling online counts in place of an address (a UCP, ACP or Shopify checkout, shipping, a basket). A get_business_profile tool counts too.
  • Catalogue: schema.org Product, Service, Menu or MenuItem with an Offer price and currency on pages we read, a UCP catalogue, or a tool such as list_services, list_products or search_catalog. Items without prices, or prices on your pages but not as data, count as partly.
  • Policies: MerchantReturnPolicy markup, a policy page linked from your pages that states its terms (“free cancellation up to 24 hours before”), or a get_policies tool. A linked page that states no terms counts as partly.
  • Free times or stock: availability on your offers counts as partly; a tool such as check_availability or check_stock counts in full (see bookings).

Which of these count depends on your kind of business: a shop is scored on its catalogue, and a plumber isn’t.

Your options

Way What it takes
Write the markup yourself

JSON-LD in your pages, using schema.org's types: LocalBusiness (or a more specific type), Offer, MerchantReturnPolicy. Check it with a structured-data validator.

schema.org: LocalBusiness schema.org: Offer Schema Markup Validator

Your website builder or shop platform

Most builders have a place for business information, opening hours and products, and many publish markup from it. Ask yours where those settings are, then check what it publishes.
Your booking or shop platform

Copy your terms onto your own site, in words: an assistant reading your site doesn't see the ones on the platform's pages.
Others

An SEO plugin or a developer. Whoever writes it, keep the data the same as what your pages say.

Check it worked

Once your change is live, check your site. We read it the way a customer's assistant would, and show what it can do there now, and what's still missing.

Or open the checker. If your site was read recently, you'll see that read, and when you can ask for a fresh one.

See it working

On the leaderboards, with what an agent can do at each one and through which door.