Facebook’s New “Business” Open Graph Object Type Aims To Boost Visibility Of Local Info

As of today, a new Open Graph object type will exist for local businesses on Facebook. This new object type, the Business Object, will help Facebook “better surface local business information” throughout the site, Facebook says.

According to the Facebook Developers Blog, this change will help businesses surface better on:

• News Feed
• Graph Search
• Check-Ins
• Pages

The following properties are available for the new business object type:

Required properties:

• og:url
• og:type
• og:title
• place:location:latitude
• place:location:longitude
• business:contact_data:street_address
• business:contact_data:locality
• business:contact_data:country
• business:contact_data:postal_code

Optional properties:

• business:contact_data:region
• business:contact_data:email
• business:contact_data:phone_number
• business:contact_data:fax_number
• business:contact_data:website
• business:hours:day
• business:hours:start
• business:hours:end

If a custom business object has already been set up, it can be mapped to the new business type in the object type settings. Simply update the “inherits From” to ‘Business’ and fill in the additional required fields.

For more information see the official Facebook Developers post.