Dentist schema markup: what to add in 2026 and what to skip
Schema markup is often sold as a ranking trick. It is a way of describing your practice to search engines in a format they read reliably. Here is what is worth adding now, and what has stopped doing anything.
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Dentist schema markup is structured data, written in the schema.org vocabulary, that describes your practice to search engines: its name, address, phone number, opening hours, location and website. The schema.org type for a practice is called Dentist. Google reads it to understand your pages, and some markup makes a page eligible for richer search results. This guide explains which dentist schema properties Google supports, gives an example to follow, covers the changes that matter in 2026, including the end of FAQ rich results, and shows how to test your markup.
What is dentist schema?
Dentist on schema.org is a type that sits under several parents at once. It is a kind of LocalBusiness, a kind of MedicalBusiness and a kind of MedicalOrganization. That means it can use the properties of all of them: the address and opening hours of a local business, and medical properties such as medicalSpecialty, whose list of values includes Dentistry.
Google explains structured data as a way to provide "explicit clues about the meaning of a page". Its introduction to structured data says Google uses it to understand page content and to gather information about the world, such as the companies included in the markup, and that structured data can make pages eligible for rich results.
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What schema markup does for a dental practice, and what it does not
Be realistic about it. Schema markup is a clear, machine-readable statement of facts you should already show on your website. It helps Google be certain that the phone number on your contact page is your practice's phone number and that your hours are your hours.
It is not a shortcut to the map pack. Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and popularity, and its local ranking advice is about your Business Profile, reviews and links, not markup. Google also says it does not guarantee that structured data will produce any special appearance in results, even when it is correct.
Three changes that matter in 2026
FAQ rich results have gone
Many dental websites added FAQ markup to get expandable questions under their search results. Google announced that the FAQ rich result would no longer appear in Google Search from 7 May 2026, and has since removed the documentation. FAQ content on your pages can still be useful to patients. The markup no longer produces a rich result in Google Search.
Your own review stars will not show
Adding AggregateRating markup with your Google review score is one of the most common dental schema mistakes. Google's review snippet guidelines say that when a business controls the reviews about itself, its pages using LocalBusiness or Organization markup are ineligible for star ratings, whether the reviews are in the markup directly or come through an embedded widget showing Google or Facebook reviews. Google's local business documentation recommends aggregateRating only for sites that capture reviews about other businesses.
AI search needs no special markup
Google's guide to optimising for generative AI features says plainly that structured data "isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add". It still recommends structured data as part of overall SEO, because it helps with eligibility for rich results. Anyone selling special AI schema for dentists is selling something Google says you do not need.
The properties Google supports for local businesses
Google's local business structured data documentation tells you to define each location as a LocalBusiness type and to use the most specific subtype possible, which for a practice is Dentist. It lists two required properties and a set of recommended ones.
| Property | Required? | Google's notes |
|---|---|---|
| name | Required | The name of the business |
| address | Required | The physical location, with as many address properties as possible |
| telephone | Recommended | The main phone number for patients, including country and area code |
| url | Recommended | The URL of the specific location, which must be a working link |
| geo | Recommended | Latitude and longitude, to at least 5 decimal places |
| openingHoursSpecification | Recommended | Opening hours, with validFrom and validThrough available for seasonal closures |
| priceRange | Recommended | A relative price range, under 100 characters |
| department | Recommended | For departments with their own hours or phone numbers |
Because LocalBusiness is a kind of Organization, Google also recommends following its organisation markup guidance, which covers properties such as logo and sameAs, the links to your official profiles elsewhere.
A dentist schema example
Dentist schema is usually written in JSON-LD, the format Google says is the easiest to implement and maintain in most cases. It sits in a script element with the type application/ld+json, normally on your home page or contact page. For a single-site practice, the values would look like this:
| Property | Example value |
|---|---|
| @context | https://schema.org |
| @type | Dentist |
| name | Example Dental Practice |
| address | PostalAddress with streetAddress "1 High Street", addressLocality "Exampletown", postalCode "EX1 2AB", addressCountry "GB" |
| telephone | +44 1234 567890 |
| url | https://www.example-dental.co.uk/ |
| geo | GeoCoordinates with latitude 53.12345 and longitude -2.12345 |
| openingHoursSpecification | Monday to Friday, opens 08:30, closes 17:30 |
| logo | https://www.example-dental.co.uk/logo.png |
| sameAs | Your official Facebook and Instagram page addresses |
| medicalSpecialty | Dentistry |
Most plugins and website builders will produce this structure for you from a settings screen. Google's own advice is that if you use a CMS, it may be easier to use a plugin integrated into it. schema.org also defines optional properties such as isAcceptingNewPatients and employee. They are valid vocabulary, but Google's local business documentation does not list them among the properties it supports, so treat them as extras rather than priorities.
The rules your markup must follow
Google's structured data policies come down to honesty and consistency:
- Mark up only what patients can see. Google says not to add structured data about information that is not visible to users, even if it is accurate.
- Put it on the page it describes. Location details belong on that location's page.
- Be specific. Use Dentist, not a generic LocalBusiness.
- Do not mislead. Google says structured data must not be used to deceive users or misrepresent ownership or affiliation.
- Keep it consistent. The name, address, phone and hours in your markup should match your website and your Google Business Profile exactly.
Google says a breach can lead to a manual action, which removes a page's eligibility for rich results but does not affect how it ranks in ordinary web results.
Practice groups and multi-site practices
Each location should have its own page with its own Dentist markup, its own address, phone number, hours and url pointing to that location's page. Google says to define each location as its own LocalBusiness. Avoid putting the details of every site into a single block on the home page, which makes it unclear which details belong to which location.
If a single site has a part with genuinely different hours or a separate phone number, Google's department property is designed for that. Most practices do not need it.
How to test your dentist schema
- Run the page through Google's Rich Results Test and fix any critical errors.
- Check the full schema.org markup, including properties Google does not use, with the Schema Markup Validator.
- Use the URL Inspection tool in Search Console to see how Google sees the live page, then ask Google to recrawl it.
- Re-test whenever you change hours, phone numbers or your website theme or plugins, since these often overwrite or duplicate markup.
Common dentist schema mistakes
- AggregateRating built from your own Google reviews, which Google will not show as stars.
- Two plugins both outputting markup, so Google sees conflicting names or hours.
- Hours in the markup that differ from your Google Business Profile after a change.
- Generic LocalBusiness or MedicalBusiness instead of Dentist.
- Expecting FAQ markup to produce expandable results after May 2026.
- Markup describing treatments, prices or team members that are not on the page.
Schema is a small, technical part of dental SEO. Get it right once, check it when things change, and spend the rest of your effort where Google says local ranking is decided. Our guides to local SEO for dentists and SEO for dental practices cover those bigger levers, and the free search audit shows where you stand now.
Check what Google shows for your practice
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Run on our own practice first: ninth of the 14 practices measured in its town in May, first of 18 in September, on UK-wide search value. Page-one keywords: 6 in May, 194 in September.
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