AutoDealer schema: what it is and how to add it

What AutoDealer schema is

On schema.org, AutoDealer sits under LocalBusiness and AutomotiveBusiness and is described simply as a car dealership. Because it's a kind of LocalBusiness, it can carry the properties local businesses use: address, telephone, opening hours, geo coordinates, a map link and links to your other official profiles.

The usual format is JSON-LD: a script tag with data in it that visitors don't see on the page. Google says it generally recommends JSON-LD when your site's setup allows it.

What it does — and what it doesn't

Be clear-eyed about this one. Google's guidance on AI features and your website says there's no special schema.org structured data you need to add to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special AI text files or markup either. Google's structured data guidelines also say markup doesn't guarantee that any feature will appear. AutoDealer schema isn't a switch that makes ChatGPT or Google recommend you.

What it does is remove ambiguity. It states, in one standard place, that your website belongs to a car dealership at a specific address with specific hours and a specific phone number — the same facts that should be on your Google Business Profile. Google's local business documentation says this markup can tell it about details such as your hours and departments. When your markup, your website text and your profile all match, there's less room for anyone's system to confuse you with a similarly named business.

What to include

Google's local business documentation requires a name and an address, and recommends a telephone number, a URL, opening hours and geo coordinates. For a dealership, a useful block includes:

• @type: AutoDealer.
• name: exactly as on your sign and your Google profile.
• address: a PostalAddress with street, city, state, ZIP code and country.
• telephone and url: your main number and the homepage or location page.
• openingHoursSpecification: your sales hours, matching Google.
• geo and hasMap: your coordinates and the link to your Google Maps listing.
• sameAs: links to your official profiles, such as Facebook.
• logo or image, and knowsLanguage if your team serves buyers in Spanish.

Leave ratings out. Google's documentation recommends review and aggregateRating markup for local businesses only on sites that collect reviews about other businesses, so copying your Google star rating into your own markup doesn't qualify.

Everything in the block must be true and visible on the page. Google's guidelines say structured data has to be a true representation of the page content, and not describe things readers can't see.

A copy-ready example

Here's a complete block for a fictional lot. Replace every value with your own — or fill in our free AutoDealer schema generator, which builds a block like this one from a short form.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "AutoDealer",
  "name": "Example Auto Sales",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/",
  "telephone": "+1-210-555-0123",
  "logo": "https://www.example.com/images/logo.png",
  "image": "https://www.example.com/images/lot-entrance.jpg",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "1234 Example Road",
    "addressLocality": "San Antonio",
    "addressRegion": "TX",
    "postalCode": "78201",
    "addressCountry": "US"
  },
  "geo": {
    "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
    "latitude": 29.4699,
    "longitude": -98.5454
  },
  "hasMap": "https://maps.app.goo.gl/your-listing",
  "openingHoursSpecification": [
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "19:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Saturday",
      "opens": "09:00",
      "closes": "17:00"
    },
    {
      "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
      "dayOfWeek": "Sunday",
      "opens": "00:00",
      "closes": "00:00"
    }
  ],
  "knowsLanguage": ["en", "es"],
  "sameAs": ["https://www.facebook.com/exampleautosales"]
}
</script>

A few notes: hours use the 24-hour clock; the phone number includes the country and area code, as Google's documentation asks; and Sunday shows 00:00 to 00:00, which is how Google's documentation marks a day the business is closed. If your service department keeps different hours, Google also supports a nested department with its own name and hours.

Step 1: Add it to your homepage

Paste the whole block, including the <script type="application/ld+json"> tag, into your homepage's HTML, either inside the <head> or anywhere in the <body>.

Most dealer website platforms have a setting for custom code in the site header, often called something like “header scripts” or “tracking code”. If yours doesn't, send the block to your website provider and ask them to add it to the homepage. If you have more than one location, put one block on each location's page, each with its own address and hours.

Step 2: Test it

Run the live page through two free tools: Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator. The validator checks your markup against the schema.org vocabulary; the Rich Results Test shows what Google can read and flags critical errors. Fix any errors, then test again after your provider publishes the change.

Our free AI readiness checker also looks for AutoDealer or LocalBusiness markup and points out a missing name, address, phone or hours, along with other website basics.

Step 3: Keep it in sync

The block only helps while it's right. When your hours, phone or address change, update your Google profile, your website text and your markup on the same day. The mistakes to avoid:

• Hours in the markup that don't match Google or the website.
• The wrong type, such as AutoRepair for a sales lot.
• A name with extra keywords that doesn't match your sign.
• Ratings copied from Google.
• A template left with example data in it — including our example.

Schema is one small signal. The bigger ones are still your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and website pages that say clearly what you sell and how buyers can pay. To see whether any of it shows up in AI answers, run the five-minute blind check or AIForgotYou's free dealer check.