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I'm working for a review website, where we (of course) want a reference to our reviews to show up in the Local Business listing in the Google search results. The local businesses are various medical clinics.

When testing with the Rich Result Test tool in the search console I see there is no local business element found/listed if I use either MedicalOrganization or MedicalBusiness schemas, but if I use either LocalBusiness or Hospital there is.

I expect that for MedicalOrganization it is because it's not a subtype of LocalBusiness, but I really don't understand why MedicalBusiness doesn't work, as it is a subtype and is more precise than just using LocalBusiness.

Can anyone help me understand the cause of this behaviour?

In case it's relevant, here are a couple of examples:

  1. Clinic using the Hospital schema. Shows "Local Business" section in testing tool by default, but not if switching to MedicalOrganization or MedicalBusiness
  2. Clinic using MedicalOrganization. Does not show "Local Business" section in testing tool by default or switching to MedicalBusiness, but does show it when set to LocalBusiness or Hospital.
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2 Answers 2

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For MedicalOrganisation, I agree with your assessment. It is not a sub-type of LocalBusiness, which is a requirement in Google's specification. But MedicalBusiness, as you say, is a sub-type of LocalBusiness and so should work, as many other sub-types do.

My guess is it's a bug. You can report this via the "Send Feedback" link at the top of Google's specification page.

To actually solve your problem, why not use MedicalClinic? It validates, and seems to match your use case.

enter image description here

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  • Hah, thanks for that. This feels even stranger, since MedicalClinic is a subtype of MedicalBusiness!
    – rogerkk
    Jul 23, 2020 at 10:54
  • Just want to add that if this is a bug, it's not limited to the testing tool, as it affects the SERP too. This includes referencing our reviews in the sidebar AND stars displayed under the title of the regular search result.
    – rogerkk
    Jul 23, 2020 at 10:58
  • You're welcome. I'm not surprised the behaviour's reflected in SERP, but it is good to see evidence that the testing tools accurately reflect what is supported in the production environment.
    – GDVS
    Jul 23, 2020 at 12:02
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You can use schema's additionalType property in order to add more specific types from external vocabularies. By adding additionalType for MedicalBusiness under LocalBusiness your schema will look like this.

enter image description here

enter image description here

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.legelisten.no%2Fklinikker%2F7088-aleris-colosseum-nobel

However I fail to understand why you want to do this. Why do you want the local business element to show up? Why not just use a more specific sub-type like MedicalBusiness etc.?

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    I think you've misunderstood the user's question. The point is that MedicalBusiness is ignored by the validator. If that were not the case, it would trigger a "Local businesses" section in the detected types.
    – GDVS
    Jul 21, 2020 at 11:26
  • Thanks for the answer, Nina. What @GDav is saying is correct, the issue is that MedicalBusiness is ignored, although it seems to not only be an issue with the testing tool. The search actual search results also seem to reflect this.
    – rogerkk
    Jul 23, 2020 at 10:48

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