Organization schema markup: the exact JSON-LD for a startup
A complete Organization JSON-LD block for a startup home page, every property Google documents explained line by line, plus how to validate it.
LLaunchScaler·Published ·8 min read
Organization schema markup is a JSON-LD block on your home page that tells search engines your company's name, website, logo, description, founding date, contact details and the profiles that belong to it, using the schema.org Organization type. Google has no required properties for it; it recommends adding every property that applies, and uses the result to understand your details and tell you apart from similarly named companies.
Below is a complete block for a small software company, then every line explained against Google's documentation, checked in September 2026.
What does a complete Organization schema block look like?
A complete block is one <script type="application/ld+json"> element in the <head> of your home page holding a single Organization object. For a startup it usually carries name, alternate name, legal name, URL, logo, description, founding date, email, a contact point, an address if you have one, employee count and a sameAs list of your official profiles.
Every value is a placeholder. Replace each one with your real details, and delete any line you cannot back up on the page, including the Wikidata URL if your company has no Wikidata item yet.
Questions, answered
What people ask about this
01
What is Organization schema markup?
It is a JSON-LD block, usually on your home page, that describes your company to search engines using the schema.org Organization type: its name, URL, logo, description, contact details and the profiles that belong to it. Google uses it to understand your administrative details and to tell your company apart from others with similar names.
Google lists its recognized Organization properties as recommended, not required, and says to include the ones that apply. The table explains each property in the block above, what Google says it is for, and the rule that most often trips startups up.
Property
What Google says it is
The rule to follow
@type
The schema.org type
Google recommends the most specific subtype that fits, for example OnlineStore rather than OnlineBusiness for an ecommerce site
name
The name of your organization
Use the same name and alternateName you use for your site name
alternateName
Another common name, if applicable
Only a name people actually use, such as a short form
legalName
The registered legal name
Only if it differs from name
url
The URL of your organization's website
Google says this "helps Google uniquely identify your organization"
logo
A logo representative of your organization
At least 112x112px, a crawlable and indexable URL, a format Google Images supports, and legible on a white background
description
A detailed description of your organization
Use the same one-sentence description you use everywhere else
foundingDate
The date the organization was founded
ISO 8601 format, for example 2025-03-01
email, telephone
Primary contact methods
Phone numbers need the country code and area code
contactPoint
The best way for a user to contact your business
Include every support method you offer
address
Physical or mailing address
addressCountry uses the two-letter ISO 3166-1 code
numberOfEmployees
Employee count as a QuantitativeValue
A single value, or minValue and maxValue for a range
sameAs
A page on another website with more information about you
Multiple URLs allowed; Google's example is a social or review profile
Google also recognizes identifiers that matter more for larger or regulated companies: iso6523Code, duns, leiCode, globalLocationNumber, naics, vatID and taxID, plus return, shipping and loyalty policies for merchants. A two-person software company can usually leave those out. If you have a VAT number, Google calls vatID "an important trust signal for users."
Which profiles belong in sameAs?
Put the official profiles you control or that describe you by name: your LinkedIn company page, your X account, your GitHub organization, your Crunchbase profile and your Wikidata item if you have one. Each URL should be a page about your company, not a post, a search result or a page you merely appear on.
sameAs is where your entity work pays off. It connects the name on your site to the same company described elsewhere, which is the core of entity SEO for a new brand. Keep the profiles consistent with the markup: the same name, the same one-line description, the same website URL. A LinkedIn page describing a product you pivoted away from two years ago works against you.
The Wikidata item is the one most startups do not have. It carries a Q-ID in a stable URL of the form https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q123456789. Whether your company qualifies, and how to create the item so it survives, is covered in how to create a Wikidata entry for your company.
Where should Organization schema go on your site?
Put it on your home page, or on one page that describes the company such as the About page. Google says, "You don't need to include it on every page of your site." Place the script in the <head>, and make sure it is in the HTML your server sends, not added later by JavaScript.
Google can read JSON-LD injected by JavaScript. Other systems may not. In searchVIU's October 2025 test, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode each fetched a test page directly, and none of them extracted a price that existed only in JSON-LD, whether it was in the HTML or injected by JavaScript. Server-rendering the block costs nothing and removes a variable.
Pair it with WebSite markup for your site name. Google's site-name documentation says WebSite structured data on the home page is "most important" for indicating your preferred name, and the name in both blocks should match.
How do you validate Organization schema?
Test the code in Google's Rich Results Test, then in the Schema Markup Validator, then check the live page with URL Inspection. Google's own steps are to fix critical errors in the Rich Results Test, deploy, and confirm with URL Inspection that the page is not blocked by robots.txt, noindex or a login.
Paste the block, or the URL once it is live, into the Rich Results Test at search.google.com/test/rich-results. Fix anything marked critical.
Run the same code through the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org, which checks it against the schema.org vocabulary rather than Google's feature list.
Deploy, then open URL Inspection in Search Console, run Test live URL and confirm the page is fetchable.
Submit or resubmit your sitemap so Google picks up the change.
The common failures are small. A trailing comma after the last property is a JSON syntax error, so the whole block fails to parse, not just that line. Organisation with an s is not a schema.org type. A logo URL blocked by robots.txt fails Google's rule that the image must be crawlable and indexable.
Should you use an Organization schema generator?
A generator is fine for the syntax and useless for the facts. It will produce valid JSON-LD from whatever you type, but it cannot know which details your home page actually shows, and it often adds fields you would not publish. Use one to draft the block, then edit it line by line against Google's property list above.
Three generator habits cause most of the problems. They pre-fill every field, so you ship an empty telephone or a placeholder address. They default to a subtype that does not fit, such as LocalBusiness for a company with no storefront. And they output a block you paste once and forget, so the description drifts away from the one on your site.
The fix for drift is to render the block from the same source as your visible copy. In most frameworks that means one config object holding your name, description, logo URL and profile links, used by both the footer and the JSON-LD component. Change the description in one place and both update. Then run the validation steps below after every change to that file.
What should you never put in Organization schema?
Never mark up anything a visitor cannot see on the page. Google's general guidelines say "Don't mark up content that is not visible to readers of the page" and forbid structured data that misrepresents "ownership, affiliation, or primary purpose." Bing's guidelines say markup "must accurately reflect visible content" and that misleading markup "may be ignored."
In practice that rules out a founding date that appears nowhere on your site, an employee count you would not state publicly, a sameAs to a profile that is not yours, and an aggregateRating you invented. If a fact belongs in the markup, put it on the home page or About page first, in plain text.
Does Organization schema help AI answers cite you?
It helps engines identify you; the evidence that it raises citations is weak. AccuraCast analysed about 9,000 citations from 2,000+ prompts on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity and found schema on 81% of cited pages, yet concluded that adding schema "does not necessarily correlate to improved gen AI search visibility." Ahrefs found no clear citation lift after 1,885 pages added JSON-LD.
The detail inside those studies is useful. AccuraCast found Organization and Article schema mattered little for Google AI Overview citations, carried "some importance" on ChatGPT, and had no bearing on Perplexity. Google's generative AI guide says structured data "isn't required" for its AI features, while calling it "a good idea to continue using." Bing says it "may support clearer grounding but does not guarantee visibility."
So write the block for accuracy. Its job is to state who you are in a form no system has to guess at: the right logo, the right name, the right description and the right profiles. The broader evidence on markup and AI is in does schema markup help AI search, and product pages need their own type, covered in SoftwareApplication schema.
Check whether your Organization schema is there and working
LaunchScaler's free scan checks that any JSON-LD on your page parses and that structured data carries its required properties, but it does not check for Organization schema itself. That check is part of the full audit, $19 once for your domain, which adds the answer-engine panel: 10 buyer questions put to 7 engines, 70 answers read, with Organization schema among its AI visibility checks. Run the free scan first, then open the full audit from your report.
02
What properties are required for Organization schema?
None. Google's documentation says there are no required properties and recommends adding as many as apply, such as name, url, logo, description, sameAs, foundingDate and contactPoint.
03
Where should Organization schema go?
Google recommends your home page or a single page that describes the organization, such as the About page. You don't need it on every page.
04
Does Organization schema help you get cited by AI?
The evidence is mixed. AccuraCast found schema on 81% of AI-cited pages but concluded schema does not necessarily correlate with visibility, and Ahrefs found that pages adding JSON-LD saw no clear citation lift. Treat it as a way to state your identity precisely, not as a citation switch.
05
How do I test Organization schema?
Paste the URL or code into Google's Rich Results Test and fix critical errors, then check the same block in the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org. After it is live, run URL Inspection in Search Console to confirm Google can fetch the page.
Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt and in your firewall to appear as a Perplexity source. Perplexity-User fetches for users and mostly skips robots.txt.
AI Mode splits a question into many searches and cites pages that answer each part. Be indexed, answer every sub-question, and track it apart from AIO.
Reddit is 46.7% of the citations among Perplexity's top ten sources. Why AI answers lean on Reddit, and how to take part without breaking subreddit rules.
