Many local businesses offer goods and services to people in a certain geographical region in lieu of or in addition to a brick-and-mortar location. There’s also mobile (ex. food trucks) and home-based businesses out there that may need to specify which regions they service.

So how do you do put your service area information on Google you ask?

There’s currently two ways to tell search engines which regions you deliver goods and/or services to:

  1. Enter your service areas in Google My Business.

    Adding Service Areas in Google My Business

    Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc., used with permission.

    Login to Google My Business and visit the Info > Address section of your account.

    Then select Yes for “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location”.

    Here you can manually enter the region, city or zip codes that you would like to include or you can choose to have it based on a certain number of miles/kilometers from your verified business address.
    (Source: Google My Business Help)

  2.  

  3. Use Schema.org markup (structured data).
    Have your service areas listed in text somewhere on the page/website and list them in your Schema.org markup using the areaServed property. JSON-LD format is recommended. More on this below.

Note: Google recognizes Schema.org markup for service areas but the only guaranteed way to have them listed in Google’s search results is by completing this task in Google My Business.

Other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo recognize Schema.org markup as well.

Structured Data (Schema) for Service Areas

Schema.org defines the areaServed property as:

“The geographic area where a service or offered item is provided. Supersedes serviceArea.”

This property can be used for the LocalBusiness, Organization, Service, Offer, ContactPoint, DeliveryChargeSpecification, and Demand properties within Schema.

If you’re placing Schema.org markup on your site to list service areas for a local business, below are two (2) most popular ways to implement the areaServed property within Schema.org:

  1. Use the LocalBusiness or Organization Property. This will cause all products and services to be available only to the service areas listed. You would use this option if everything you do as a business is confined to those service areas. This would include products and services.
  2.  

  3. Use the Service property. This will cause specific products and services to be available in the service areas listed. You would use this option to list individual services and their service areas. This would be best if you have different services for different areas or have services for specific areas, but also sell products outside of those areas.

In either instance, the code you would add to your Schema.org snippet would resemble the following:

(All examples below are in JSON-LD format)

Schema areaServed Example by City:
This example states that the service areas for this business are two specific cities.

"areaServed": [{
    "@type": "City",
    "name": "Boulder",
    "sameAs": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado"
  },
  {
    "@type": "City",
    "name": "Denver",
    "sameAs": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver"
  }] 
}

Note: When listing cities it’s recommended to add the sameAs property in order for search engines to identify the proper city (ex: Miami, FL vs Miami, OH).

Example for Service Areas by State:
This example lists the service area as the State of California.

"areaServed": "US-CA" 

Example for Service Areas by Country:
This example lists the service area as the entire country of Mexico.

"areaServed": "MX" 

Note: See AdministrativeArea for more details and updates regarding the types of service areas you can list. According to Google My Business, you can specify your service area by city, postal code, county, state or country.

When listing countries or states, make sure to use the ISO 3166-1 format.

Schema areaServed Examples by Radius

The following two examples utilize the GeoCircle property to establish service areas by a certain distance from either the business location or another specified location.

Note: Google My Business no longer supports listing your service area as a distance and now must choose service areas by city, state, or other area(s). However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t use the schema. So, use the following examples at your own discretion.

Example for Service Areas that need a Distance from a Specific Address:
(Usually the Business Address)
This example states the service area of this business is 100 miles from their address.

"areaServed": { 
"@type": "GeoCircle", 
"address": { 
"@type": "PostalAddress", 
"streetAddress": "123 Your Street #105", 
"addressLocality": "Boulder", 
"addressRegion": "CO", 
"postalCode": "80301", 
"addressCountry": "US" 
}, 
"geoRadius": "160934" 
}

Example for Service Areas that need a Distance from a Specific Longitude/Latitude:
This example states the service area of this business is 100 miles from these coordinates.

"areaServed": { 
"@type": "GeoCircle", 
"geoMidpoint": { 
"@type": "GeoCoordinates", 
"latitude": "42.362757", 
"longitude": "-71.087109" 
}, 
"geoRadius": "160934" 
}

Note: geoRadius uses Meters by default. However, you can specify another measurement if desired.

That about sums it up!

Now you can easily list your service areas with search engines using Schema.org structured data.

Let me know if this has helped or if you have any thoughts regarding the Schema implementation aspect below.

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