This Best Practices document is intended to support digital marketing teams in optimizing Google’s understanding of a specific MedicalOrganization, typically a Hospital, or a MedicalClinic. Our goal is to ensure we include all the content required for a robust knowledge graph. Your MedicalOrganization markup should be primarily defined on a single URL (e.g the home page, or an about page).

For simplicity,this document will use the term Hospital, but these recommendations apply to every subType with provenance from MedicalOrganization and LocalBusiness (e.g MedicalClinic, Pharmacy, etc).

The Strategy and Typical Page Content sections are best used during high level design and brainstorming phases. The Schema.org Properties & Guidelines section is best used during the creation phase. Google’s Rich Result documentation for Organizations is subject to change. Review the Structured Data Type Definitions section for up to date information regarding required and recommended properties for Rich Result eligibility.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Strategy: Which Type to Target?
  • Hospital
  • Medical Clinic
  • Diagnostic Lab
  • Pharmacy
  • Physician
• Typical Page Content
• Schema.org Properties & Guidelines

Which Type Should You Target for your Medical Organization?

Schema.org vocabulary has several Types and subTypes to describe common MedicalOrganizations. Highlighter templates typically target pages that have the same primary entity (e.g all Hospitals, or all Individual Physician’s offices). For simplicity, Schema.org Properties & Guidelines section will use the term Hospital, but these recommendations apply to every subType with provenance from MedicalOrganization and Local Business (e.g MedicalClinic, Pharmacy, etc).

Hospital

• Best suited for: Pages that describe Hospitals.
• Should not be used for: Pages that describe other kinds of medical facilities (e.g clinics, labs, pharmacies, etc). A Hospital might include, or encompass these facilities in which case you could state that a Hospital has a department that is a Pharmacy.

Medical Clinic

• Best suited for: Pages that describe clinics. Per Schema.org, a Medical Clinic is a facility that is often associated with a hospital or medical school, and is devoted to a specific diagnosis and/or domain of healthcare. A clinic primarily Previously limited to outpatients but with evolution it may be open to inpatients as well.
• Should not be used for: a physician’s office. In that case, use the more appropriate Physician or Individual Physician.

DiagnosticLab

• Best suited for: Pages that describe diagnostic labs. Per Schema.org, a DiagnosticLab. A medical laboratory that offers on-site or off-site diagnostic services.

Pharmacy

• Best suited for: Pages that describe a pharmacy or a drug store.
• Should not be used for: entities that do not have a physical location.

Physician

• Best suited for: Independent physicians with a private practice and/or independent clinic. (Note that Physicians IndividualPhysician is a subType of Physician and has more opportunities to clarify affiliation information).
• Should not be used for: pages describing people who are not physicians (e.g admin, and/or paramedical professionals). 

Typical Page Content

This section describes content commonly seen on Hospital or MedicalOrganization type of page. We recommend including all of the following content as you work on these pages and decide what information you intend to display. The content in this list aligns with common properties that Schema App recommends for Hospital schema markup. Note: To target a specific property, the content must be present in the HTML of your page.

• Name (alternateNate, legalName)

• Description

• Logo

• Founding Date

• Employees 

  • Total number

  • Individuals Employees

• URLs that reflect other web locations where this Hospital is referenced

• URL

• Telephone 

• Email, Postal Address & Contact Information

• Map & Location

• Available Service & Medical Specialty 

• Additional Content (FAQ, etc)

• Organization Metadata: 

LEI Code, Vat ID, Tax ID, Duns and Bradstreet Number, ISO 6523 Code, NAICS Code, Global Location Number

Schema.org Properties & Guidelines

The second section of this document lists some of the schema.org properties that Google recommends defining for a Hospital. If you have any questions please contact your CSM or support@schemaapp.com.

Name

Markup Guidelines

There should only be one official “name” chosen for the Hospital.

Alternate Name

Markup Guidelines

The “alternateName property” can be useful for calling out other common names for your Hospital. 

Legal Name

Markup Guidelines

This should reflect the registered, legal name of the Hospital.

Logo

Markup Guidelines

This can either be an ImageObject or a URL. The image must be larger than 112 x 112px, the image URL must be indexable, and it must be in a Google supported format. Consider how the logo will appear on a mostly white background; do you need to make adjustments to improve visibility?

Number of Employees

Markup Guidelines

This can be included as an exact number or as a range using the Quantitative Value type.

Individual Employees

Markup Guidelines

Utilize internal linking wherever possible! If the people mentioned have an entity home (i.e a Profile page, or an Individual Physician page), ensure that URL is present on the page to be referenced. Consider how easily unique provider entities can be programmatically isolated (e.g contain all provider info in a unique <div> rather than a series of undifferentiated <p> elements).

Founding Date

Markup Guidelines

The founding date can reflect a year or a specific date.

Same As

Markup Guidelines

Use the sameAs property to reference other locations on the Web that describe or define your Hospital. Examples can include: social media profiles, Better Business Bureau listings, review sites (e.g Yelp), and others. 

Be judicious with your sameAs links! Not everything is appropriate to include under sameAs. A key question to ask is: does the primary entity of the URL you’re referencing share an identity with your Hospital? If not, it is not appropriate to reference it as a sameAs URL.

Email

Markup Guidelines

If your Hospital has multiple email addresses with distinct departments or functions, you can specify them using multiple Contact Point data items. Consider how easily the components for email addresses and departments can be programmatically isolated.

Telephone

Markup Guidelines

Include the country code. Dashes and parentheses are optional. If your Hospital has multiple telephone numbers for distinct departments, you can specify them using multiple Contact Point data items. Consider how easily the components for email addresses and departments can be programmatically isolated.

Postal Address

Markup Guidelines

Your address may be a physical or a mailing address. Include as many properties as possible (e.g streetAddress, addressLocality, addressRegion, postalCode). If your Hospital has multiple postal addresses or locations, you can specify them using multiple Postal Address data items. Consider how easily the address components can be programmatically isolated.

Reviews/Ratings

Content Requirement

Reviews and Ratings on a Hospital landing page must be about the Hospital itself or the Services it provides. Nested #document data is inaccessible to the Schema App Highlighter. Ideally, Rating information should be aggregated and submitted on the Hospital page itself. 

For more information, consult Google’s content requirements for Reviews and Ratings. When in doubt, discuss Rating and Review content with your CSM.

Available Service

Content Requirement

This section may be targeted by Omni LER. 

Utilize internal linking wherever possible! If the services mentioned have an entity home (i.e an Medical Therapy overview page), then ensure that the URL of the entity home is present. Consider how easily various Test, Procedure, and Therapy entities can be programmatically isolated. E.g: contain all Test type info in a unique <div> rather than a series of undifferentiated <p> elements), in succession with Procedure and Therapies in their own unique divs.

Medical Specialty 

Content Requirement

This section may be targeted by Omni LER. Ideally, all entities targeted by the same property (e.g specialty, or knowAbout) should be contained within a single parent component. To target specific Medical Specialty enumeration members, the content of the JSON-LD must match the Schema.org Medical Specialty enumeration list. Discuss strategies to achieve this with your CSM. 

Identification Codes

Typically, we advise that all the content in your schema markup must be present on your webpage. This advice is less relevant for identification codes and similar forms of metadata. You can include these values in your markup without calling attention to them in your web content. 

Vat ID

This is the Value Added Tax code associated with your Hospital, if applicable.

Tax ID

This is the Tax ID associated with your Hospital. The country associated with your Tax ID must match the Country listed in your Hospital’s Postal Address.

ISO 6523 Code

An ISO 6523 code is a globally standard 2 part identification number. The first part defines the identification system, and the second part defines the identification value. Google recommends separating the two parts with a colon. ISO 6523 codes are Google’s preferred way to reference Dun & Bradstreet Numbers, LEI Codes, and Global Location Numbers.

Dun & Bradstreet Number

This is the Dun & Bradstreet number for your Hospital. You can query the Dun & Bradstreet database here.

Note: This value can also be added under the iso6523Code if you use the prefix “0060”

LEI Code

This is the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) for your Hospital, defined in ISO 17442.

Note: This value can also be added under the iso6523Code if you use the prefix “0199”

Global Location Number

This is the GS1 Global Location Number identifying the location of your Hospital.

Note: This value can also be added under the iso6523Code if you use the prefix “0088”

NAICS Code

This is the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for your Hospital. The NAICS code for General Medical and Surgical Hospitals is 622110. You can find that information and specific subtypes related to that value here.

FAQPage

Content & Code Requirements

Ensure all FAQs follow a standardized HTML format & structure (e.g questions are always an <h3> element with a nested <p>). If the answer element is a sibling to the question element, ideally it should contain the entirety of the answer text (e.g <div id = faq-answer> with nested elements.

If FAQs are written in an accordion, ideally that accordion should be differentiated from other accordions (e.g <div id = “faq_accordion”>). Ensure all content is accessible to the Highlighter & present on the same URL (e.g avoid Answers contained in Javascript generated pop-up windows). 

Omni Linked Entity Recognition

Content & Code Requirements

An Omni Linked Entity Recognition highlight works best when we can target one single HTML component that contains all our desired content. For example, we may want to target all of an article’s written content, but not the footer and recommended articles immediately below the article.