What is the difference between an organization schema and a business location.

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Organization schema describes the parent entity behind a brand, such as a company, practice, or nonprofit. It is often used for information that applies to the organization as a whole, not a specific storefront or office.

Schema Nerd is currently focused on LocalBusiness schema. An Organization schema plugin is planned as a future Schema Nerds release. This post explains what Organization schema is, when you should use it, and what to do now if you want to prepare your site for a clean Organization setup later.

Quick answer

  • Organization schema is for your brand or parent entity.
  • LocalBusiness schema is for each physical location.
  • Schema Nerd’s Organization schema support is planned. For now, focus on getting LocalBusiness schema correct and avoiding duplicate schema output from multiple tools.
  • If you already have Organization schema output from another plugin, keep it consistent and do not let it conflict with your LocalBusiness schema.

What Organization schema is

Organization schema typically includes:

  • Organization name and legal name
  • Logo
  • Official website URL
  • Main contact point or corporate phone number
  • Social profiles (sameAs links)
  • Parent organization relationships (when relevant)

Organization schema can help search engines understand your brand identity and connect your website to your official presence elsewhere on the web.

When Organization schema is useful

Organization schema is especially useful when:

  • Your brand has multiple physical locations and you want a single parent entity defined.
  • You have a corporate brand with departments, subsidiaries, or franchise-like location structures.
  • Your “primary” business identity is not tied to a single address, such as a service brand with many offices or a company with a headquarters that is not customer-facing.

If you run a single-location business, Organization schema can still be useful, but it should not replace LocalBusiness schema if customers visit your location.

How Organization schema differs from LocalBusiness schema

Organization schema answers:
“What is this brand?”

LocalBusiness schema answers:
“Where is this business location, and how do customers interact with it?”

Many sites eventually use both, but the key is avoiding contradictory data.

Examples of contradictions that cause issues:

  • Different business names between Organization and LocalBusiness
  • Different phone numbers with no clear reason
  • Different URLs or social profiles
  • Different hours applied sitewide

Schema Nerd status: Organization schema is planned

Schema Nerds is the umbrella brand for multiple schema tools. Today, the LocalBusiness plugin outputs LocalBusiness JSON-LD sitewide in the universal header and supports the full LocalBusiness field set.

Organization schema support is planned as a future Schema Nerd plugin, alongside other schema types such as FAQ, HowTo, and JobPosting.

What to do now (before Organization schema is available)

1) Make Schema Nerd your source of truth for LocalBusiness schema

If you are using Schema Nerd for LocalBusiness schema output, it is best to disable LocalBusiness schema output from other plugins and themes to avoid duplicates.

2) If another plugin is outputting Organization schema, keep it clean

If your site already outputs Organization schema from an SEO plugin, a theme, or custom code:

  • Keep the Organization name consistent with your brand name
  • Use the same logo and official URL
  • Use the correct corporate phone number or primary contact point
  • Avoid inserting location-specific details into Organization markup

3) Avoid manual schema snippets you will forget about later

Hard-coded schema in headers and templates is a common source of conflicts. If you add Organization schema manually now, document where it lives so you can remove or replace it later when Schema Nerd’s Organization plugin is available.

4) Validate regularly

Use Schema Nerd’s validator to review Google Schema Markup Validator results. If your Organization schema is invalid or conflicting, it is better to fix it now than to layer more schema types on top.

Preparation checklist for a future Organization schema setup

If you want to be ready for Organization schema when it becomes available, collect the data you will likely need:

  • Organization name and legal name
  • Official website URL
  • Logo URL
  • Social profile URLs
  • Primary contact phone number and email (if you publish it)
  • Brand address (only if appropriate for the parent entity)

Keep this information consistent across your website and major listings.

Next steps

If you are building location schema today, start here:

If you want to understand how schema should be placed: