Your clinic website needs 4 kinds of schema markup that still do something. These are the most specific LocalBusiness subtype for your practice, Organization, Article on every blog post, and BreadcrumbList. Two of the types most clinic sites still run do nothing at all. Google dropped the FAQ rich result on 7 May 2026 and removed its help pages on 15 June 2026. The How-to rich result went years before that. A third type is worse than useless. Google will not show review stars you mark up on your own site. And if you republish a patient review about clinical care, you are using a testimonial, which Section 133 of the National Law bans.
What does schema markup actually do for a clinic?
Schema markup is a block of code in your page. Patients never see it. It tells a search engine what the page is, in a format the engine does not have to guess at.
That is the whole idea. The rest is detail.
For your clinic, it does 2 useful jobs. It tells Google what kind of business you are and where you are. That feeds local results and Maps. It also labels your content with an author and a date. AI answer tools lean on those labels when they decide whether to cite you.
It will not lift your ranking on its own. Marking up a thin page does not make it a good page. If you want the wider picture, we covered where schema sits in a content programme and what a regulated page needs to get cited in AI search.
This post is about something narrower. Most clinic sites run schema that has quietly stopped working. Many also run one type that can get the practice into real trouble.
Which schema types still earn a Google rich result?
Google publishes a page called "All structured data features". It lists everything that can change how your result looks. If a type is not on it, that markup does nothing for you in Google Search.
Here is where the common clinic types stand.
| Schema type | Still a Google feature | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Article. | Yes. It is on the current list. | Keep it on every blog post. Author, dates, headline, description. |
| BreadcrumbList. | Yes. Listed as Breadcrumb. | Keep it sitewide. It changes how the URL line renders. |
| LocalBusiness. | Yes. Listed as Local business. | Keep it, and use the most specific subtype you can. |
| Organization. | Yes. It is on the current list. | Keep it on the homepage and about page. |
| FAQPage. | No. Withdrawn from Google Search on 7 May 2026. | It earns nothing in Google now. Keep it only for AI engines and Bing, and stop counting it as an SEO win. |
| HowTo. | No. The documentation was removed and the rich result no longer shows. | Remove it or leave it. Either way it does nothing in Google. |
| Review and AggregateRating on your own clinic. | No. Self-serving reviews are ineligible. | Turn it off. See section five, because in Australian healthcare this one can also cause you legal trouble. |
You can check this yourself rather than take our word for it. Open Google's "All structured data features" page. FAQ and How-to are not on it. Both used to be.
Why did FAQ schema stop working, and should you delete it?
Google's own change log records it in 2 steps, and the wording matters.
On 8 May 2026 Google added a notice that the feature was being retired. The reason it gave was blunt. The feature "will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026".
On 15 June 2026 it went further and removed the documentation, because "the FAQ rich result feature is no longer shown in Google Search results".
There is a detail in that history that you should know as a health provider. Back in September 2023, Google had already limited the FAQ rich result so that it "is only shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites". Health sites were the last group holding it. Now nobody has it.
So should you strip FAQPage out of your pages?
No, and this is where a lot of advice gets it wrong. The rich result is gone. But other systems still read the markup. Question-and-answer pairs are exactly what AI answer tools want to lift. Keep your FAQ content. Keep the markup if it is already there. Just stop counting it as a Google win. It now helps you with AI tools and Bing.
The same honesty applies to llms.txt files. On 15 June 2026 Google clarified that these files "aren't needed for Google Search (and won't negatively or positively impact your visibility or rankings)".
Which schema type should a clinic use for itself?
Google's instruction on this is one sentence. Use "the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible".
Most clinic sites do not do this. They use a general LocalBusiness because that is the plugin's default setting.
Schema.org has better options sitting there unused. A medical practice is a MedicalClinic, which sits in the hierarchy as Thing, then Organization, then LocalBusiness, then MedicalBusiness, then MedicalClinic. A single doctor or a doctor's practice is a Physician, in the same branch. A dental practice is a Dentist. A physiotherapy practice is a Physiotherapy.
The benefit to you is small but real. A more specific type gives Google more to work with, and changing one word costs you nothing.
Here is one useful technical detail. If your practice really does 2 things, Google says to list both types together. Do not use additionalType, because Google does not support it.
Do not add types you cannot back up. A general practice is not a Hospital. A salon with no registered health practitioner on staff is not a MedicalClinic. Your schema has to match what the page actually says. A type that claims too much is the same problem as a headline that claims too much.
Why are review stars a double problem for a clinic?
This is the part most worth your time.
Almost every SEO plugin offers to put an average star rating into your markup. Many clinics have it switched on. People are proud of this field, because stars in a search result look like the thing they are paying for.
It fails twice, for 2 unrelated reasons. Each one is enough on its own.
Google will not show it. The review snippet guidelines are explicit. "If the entity that's being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, their pages that use LocalBusiness or any other type of Organization structured data are ineligible for star review feature." Google spells out the case too: "a review about entity A is placed on the website of entity A, either directly in their structured data or through an embedded third-party widget (for example, Google Business reviews or Facebook reviews widget)."
Read the widget part again. Putting a Google reviews widget on your own site does not get you around the rule. Google names that exact workaround and shuts it down.
AHPRA may treat it as a testimonial. AHPRA is the body behind the health ad rules. Section 133 of the National Law bans any health ad that "uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business". Say a patient gives a five-star review of their treatment, and you republish it on your own site. That is a statement about your service that you chose and placed.
So Google cannot see the field, but a regulator can. That is the worst mix a line of code can manage.
What does Section 133 say about testimonials?
The section is short, and the testimonial ban is one clause of five.
Section 133(1) sets out 5 things a health ad must not do. This covers ads for a health service or for a business that provides one. The ad must not be false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead. It must not offer a gift, discount or other deal without stating the terms and conditions. It must not be an ad that "uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service or business". It must not be an ad that "creates an unreasonable expectation of beneficial treatment". And it must not be an ad that "directly or indirectly encourages the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of regulated health services".
In plain words, do not mislead, do not hide the terms of a deal, do not use testimonials, do not raise false hopes and do not push care people do not need.
The top penalty is written into the section. For a person it is $60,000. For a company it is $120,000. That text comes from the combined Queensland version of the National Law, current as at 10 April 2026.
People often miss 2 things here.
First, the ban applies to your practice when it advertises. Patients can still have opinions. A patient can leave a Google review, and nobody has broken a rule. You cross the line when your practice takes that review and republishes it as an ad. Structured data counts as publishing. It is a claim in code that you put on your own page.
Second, this is our reading of how the section applies to markup. AHPRA has not published a ruling about JSON-LD itself. We think our reading is the safe one. Following it costs you nothing, because Google ignores the field anyway. We have written up what actually counts as a testimonial in more detail, including where reviews about non-clinical things sit.
What belongs in a clinic page's schema?
Here is the working set. It is short on purpose.
| Page | Schema type | The fields that matter |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage. | Organization, plus the specific LocalBusiness subtype. | Name, address, telephone, url, openingHoursSpecification, geo, image. |
| Each location page, if you have more than one site. | One LocalBusiness subtype per physical location. | A separate address and separate opening hours for each. Do not reuse one block. |
| Practitioner profile pages. | Person, and Physician where the page is the practitioner's practice. | Name, jobTitle, the registration you actually hold, worksFor pointing at the practice. |
| Service pages. | Service or MedicalProcedure, referenced from the practice. | Name and a plain description. No outcome claims, no comparative language. |
| Blog posts. | Article. | Headline, author with a real profile URL, datePublished, dateModified, description, image. |
| Every page. | BreadcrumbList. | Position, name and item for each level, matching the visible breadcrumb. |
| Nothing, anywhere. | AggregateRating or Review about your own practice. | Leave the field out entirely. |
Two rules sit over all of it. First, the markup has to describe what is visible on the page. Second, the fields have to be true. For your clinic, that means the description field must meet the same standard as your headline. It counts as advertising the moment you publish it.
If you are also working on the local side, our guide to local SEO for clinics covers the Business Profile half of this, which is where reviews legitimately live.
How do you check your own schema in ten minutes?
You do not need a developer to find out what you are running.
- Open your homepage, view the page source, and search it for the word "schema". Every JSON-LD block will show up.
- Search that source for "aggregateRating" and for "ratingValue". If either is there, that is the field to remove first.
- Search for "FAQPage" and "HowTo". Neither earns a Google result now. Note them and move on rather than panic.
- Look at the "@type" on your main business block. If it says LocalBusiness, ask whether MedicalClinic, Physician, Dentist or Physiotherapy describes you better.
- Run the page through Google's Rich Results Test. It tells you what Google can actually produce from the page, which is a different question from whether the code is valid.
- Check that the address, phone number and opening hours in the markup match what is printed on the page. Stale markup is common after a practice moves or changes hours.
That whole list takes about as long as a coffee. On most clinic sites it finds at least one thing to fix.
Underneath it all is a pattern we keep seeing in healthcare SEO. The tools are built for businesses that can advertise like any other shop. Your clinic cannot, so check the default settings instead of trusting them. Reviews are the clearest case, and they will not be the last.
