How this register works
The value of a directory is entirely in what its marks mean. These are the rules, and they are the product.
The rules
Checked is not for sale
The mark is the full stop from the abi. wordmark with a tick in it. It means one thing: this company displays its registered number on its own website, as UK trading disclosure rules require, and we confirmed it on the date shown. It says the registration was checked. It does not say the company uses abi., and it cannot be bought at any price.
Outline, then solid
The mark starts as an outline: we found the number on the company's site. It turns solid when the company confirms the entry is theirs, by writing to us from an address on that same domain. Both are the same check; the solid mark adds the company's own confirmation and the date it gave it. Neither can be bought, and a company cannot be confirmed without first being checked.
What a company says about itself is labelled as such
Where a company has told us where it stands on AI and automation, the entry shows its answer with the date, marked as its own words. We do not check it and it never affects the mark.
The whole UK register, not a sample
Companies House publishes the entire register once a month. We take that file and filter it, so a company is never missing because a quota ran out. Earlier work on our other directory sampled, and a real company was excluded because its sector's allocation for the year had run out six weeks in. That cannot happen here.
Specialism is inferred until you tell us otherwise
Specialism comes from the SIC code a company chose at incorporation. SIC codes are self-declared and rarely revisited, so every inferred specialism says so.
Addresses are cut to the district
We receive the full registered office address and keep the town and the postcode district. Pins on the map sit at the centre of that district.
No ratings, and no borrowed rankings
We carry no review scores. Showing a third party's stars would mean making a quality claim we cannot check, on data we do not own, and the review platforms require their own commercial agreement before a directory may display their content at all. We also do not reproduce anyone else's published list of leading providers. Those lists are somebody's editorial selection and they are protected as such. Where this register surfaces larger companies it does so from the accounts they file, which anybody can look up and check.
What is offered to search engines
Every company has a page, and every page is live and linkable. A page is offered to search engines when the company carries the Checked mark and either its own website describes managed services in two or more independent ways, or the company has confirmed the entry from its own domain. That is evidence, gathered the same way for everyone. Paying for a Profile or a Featured label never moves a page into the index, and the terms say so.
How lists are ordered
Town pages, the AI page and the changes page list companies in the order of what the register knows: confirmed first, then checked, then by name. That order is the same for every company and it is stated on the page. The register's own list on the home page can be sorted by the reader. A Featured entry, which is a paid position, sits first on the home page and on its town page, and is labelled Featured on the row wherever it appears, so it is never mistaken for an order the register made. Nothing anywhere on this site is a score, a rating or a ranking of one company against another.
Nothing is copied from another directory
Not one record, not one description, not one review. Certification marks appear only when a company declares them, because the certification registers do not permit bulk ingestion.