In September we audited 742 business websites across Newcastle, Lake Macquarie and Maitland for The State of Small Business Websites in the Hunter. 34% of them carried LocalBusiness structured data, the block of code that tells Google what a business is, where it is and when it is open. Web-wide the figure is about 4%, so the region looked well ahead. Then we built a tool that reads what the block actually says, and pointed it at 30 of those sites.
Having LocalBusiness schema and having useful LocalBusiness schema are different things. Of 30 sites drawn at random from the ones that have it, 27 had a block our extension could read, and not one of the 27 was complete. Six had no address, which Google requires. Twenty had no opening hours. Twenty-three had no map coordinates. The block is there. It just does not say much, and the fix is usually a settings screen rather than code.
What "complete" means
Google publishes a list of properties for each kind of structured data. Some are required: without them the block is ignored for the rich result. For a LocalBusiness that is the name and the address. Others are recommended: the phone number, the opening hours, the map coordinates, the price range, an image, the website address, and the business's other profiles on the web. Recommended is the polite word. They are the fields that let Google tie the page to the pin on the map and answer "is it open now" without a click.
SEO Readout, our free Chrome extension, parses every JSON-LD block on a page and checks each node against that list. We ran its collector and rules over the 30 sites in a phone-sized headless browser, the same code that runs when you click the icon. It found:
- 6 of 27 nodes had no address. Address is required. Those blocks do nothing for the rich result.
- 3 had no name.
- 20 of 27 had no opening hours.
- 23 of 27 had no coordinates.
- 9 had no phone number in the block, on sites that print the phone number in the header.
Every platform in the sample scored zero complete: WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Duda, Webflow and hand-coded alike. The builders fill in the name, the address and the phone because they hold them from sign-up, and stop. The WordPress plugins tend to emit the type and the name and leave the rest to a settings screen the owner has never opened.
One site was hiding its schema from Google
A restaurant in the sample serves a full Restaurant block, address, hours and rating, to a desktop browser and leaves it out for a phone. We loaded the same page both ways to be sure: four blocks on desktop, three on mobile, and the one that goes is the one with the business in it. Google indexes the mobile version of a page, so to Google that block does not exist. The template is a national ordering platform, and every restaurant on it has the same hole. The only way to see that is to run the check in a phone-sized browser.
Two other sites carry their LocalBusiness as Microdata, attributes on the HTML rather than a JSON-LD block. Google accepts that format. The extension reads JSON-LD only, which is the format Google recommends, so those two are real and uncounted here.
Why it matters for a Newcastle business
Someone in Belmont searches "plumber Belmont" and Google shows the businesses it can place there. Structured data is one of the ways it places you. A LocalBusiness node with a real address, a phone number, the hours and the coordinates is a plain statement of the four facts Google needs, in the format it asked for, and it lets Google match the website to the Google Business Profile instead of guessing. The mechanism is set out in local SEO for Newcastle businesses, and the AI-search side of the same block, why an answer engine quotes one business and not another, is in local GEO for Newcastle businesses.
The fix is small. On a site that already has the block it is an afternoon, and the block is usually a plugin screen or a settings panel rather than code. Hours, coordinates and a phone number are things the business already knows.
Check your own
SEO Readout is free on the Chrome Web Store, runs on the tab you click it on and nothing else, and sends nothing anywhere. Open your home page, click the icon, open the Schema tab. If your LocalBusiness node is in the three quarters missing hours or coordinates, it says exactly which fields, and what to put in them. If the list is longer than you would like, the structured-data work is part of every SEO build we do in Newcastle, and for a site we did not build it is the first half of the AI Optimisation Pack.
Method. Thirty sites drawn at random, with a fixed seed, from the 269 in the study that carried LocalBusiness schema, run through the extension's own collector and rules (v1.0.1) in headless Chrome at a phone viewport on 24 September 2026. 27 had a JSON-LD node the extension could read; two carried Microdata only; one served the block to desktop only. Percentages are of 27 and carry the interval a sample of that size does.
Written by Newcastle Web Co, web design & seo in Cameron Park NSW 2285. Last updated 24 September 2026.
