44% of small business homepages have no structured data. What that means for AI answers
Short answer: 1,453 of the 3,283 small business homepages we loaded (44.3%) had no valid JSON-LD structured data. The other 1,830 (55.7%) had at least one valid block. Which website builder you use made a bigger difference than what kind of business you run.
JSON-LD is a small block of code on a page that states facts in a format software reads directly: this is a dentist, here's the address, these are the hours. AI tools can read your page without it, but they have to infer those facts from the text.
By website builder
Homepages that loaded without a bot check:
| Builder | With valid JSON-LD | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Squarespace | 277 of 368 | 75.3% |
| Wix | 145 of 214 | 67.8% |
| Shopify | 124 of 184 | 67.4% |
| WordPress | 680 of 1,014 | 67.1% |
| Duda | 56 of 98 | 57.1% |
| Webflow | 29 of 53 | 54.7% |
| GoDaddy | 80 of 153 | 52.3% |
| Other or unknown | 434 of 1,019 | 42.6% |
| Weebly | 5 of 80 | 6.2% |
Several builders add some structured data for you. We only checked that a valid block exists, not what's in it, so check that yours includes your hours and address.
By type of business
Lawyers (149 of 206, 72.3%), dentists (174 of 242, 71.9%) and home services (146 of 208, 70.2%) were the most likely to have it. Accounting, insurance and finance (83 of 177, 46.9%), real estate (63 of 134, 47.0%) and hair, beauty and tattoo (120 of 251, 47.8%) were the least.
What to do
- Run the free business schema checker on your homepage.
- If you have nothing, or only a site name, add a LocalBusiness block with name, address, phone, hours and website. Our schema guide has a template. For the markup that fits your kind of business, see how restaurants show up in AI search or AI search for dental practices.
- Make sure the hours in the block match the hours on the page and on your Google profile. When those disagree, AI may pick the wrong one.
Being readable is the first step. To see whether AI actually names your business, who it names instead and where it contradicts your website, get the full $99 AI visibility audit, paid once.
Data: Preferly, "How many small business websites block AI crawlers?" (2026), https://www.preferly.ai/research/ai-crawler-study. We checked 4,111 small and local business websites in 26 US cities on Oct 22, 2026 and analyzed the 3,693 that responded. The aggregate data is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with that credit. "Valid JSON-LD" means at least one block that parsed; we didn't grade how complete it was.
Questions
Does structured data make AI recommend me?
Nobody can promise that. It makes your basic facts (name, address, hours, phone) easy for software to read without guessing, which helps AI repeat them correctly.
What kind of structured data should a local business add?
A LocalBusiness block (or a more specific type such as Dentist or Restaurant) on the homepage with your name, address, phone, hours and website.
3 AI models, 5 customer questions, about a minute. Or check whether AI crawlers can reach your site.
No email. It reads your robots.txt and homepage, the way AI crawlers do.