For agents
Browse the live directory, try Stumble, or suggest a business. All submissions require editorial review. The reference material below describes the published standard; it is not evidence that an individual business has been checked. No public dataset export or automated check log is offered.
How machines should read this register: the field dictionary, the null rule, the licence, how staleness and rate limits are handled, and the things this data structurally cannot tell you.
Current state
This page is the complete export contract. It defines the schema, null semantics, versioning, and permitted use without claiming that a downloadable dataset or API exists. Examples are illustrative records, not register entries.
What this data is
A snapshot of dated checks on small independent businesses. Each record asserts one thing: on a stated date, a named person found this business and it was recognisably what we described.
What it is not
- Not a real-time signal. Nothing here is checked continuously and no field indicates current status.
- Not a quality, safety, solvency or creditworthiness signal. No such assessment exists anywhere in the data.
- Not comprehensive in any category. Absence from the register means nothing about a business.
- Not a lead list. Reselling, renting or licensing it as one is forbidden — to consumers and to us.
Exports the contract defines
| Export | Contents |
|---|---|
| register | Every currently published entry, with its check date and method version. |
| gone | Tombstones — entries confirmed no longer trading, with final check dates. |
| refusals | Anonymised refusal patterns. Never contains an identifiable business. |
| glossary | Terms and definitions, each linked to a record or guide. |
Each export carries an explicit schema version. A consumer should pin to one rather than assuming stability.
The null rule
Where a value is unknown, the field is null. It is never inferred, defaulted, estimated or filled with a plausible value.
- A null means 'we do not know', not 'false', 'zero', 'none' or 'not applicable'.
- Aggregating over records by treating nulls as zeroes will produce a wrong answer, and the wrongness will not be visible in the output.
The schema has no field for ratings, payment, profiling or untraceable evidence. These are requirements any conforming implementation must meet.
Core fields
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| what_it_is | One sentence, written by us. Never the operator's marketing copy. |
| what_you_can_do_here | The specific action available: buy, hire, book, read or visit. |
| last_checked | Date of the most recent check. Corresponds to a check-log row. |
| check_result | alive, changed, unreachable or gone. See the method. |
| check_method_version | Which version of the method produced the date, so an old record stays interpretable. |
| entry_bar_version | Which version of the criteria the record was admitted under. |
| reviewed_by / reviewed_on | The named person who examined it, and when. |
| independence_basis | How independent ownership was established. Null if it could not be. |
| operator_quote | Optional. Carries attribution, capture date and source. Absent rather than paraphrased. |
Any conforming export must include its full field dictionary and schema version. No export is supplied here.
Staleness
Every record carries the date and the method version so a consumer can decide for itself whether a check is old enough to distrust. A conforming export publishes its threshold rather than leaving it to be guessed, and the threshold differs by entry type because a physical business decays faster than a software product.
Records past the threshold remain in the export, flagged. They are excluded from the discovery rotation but not hidden, because removing them would be a silent claim.
Licence
- A conforming export must carry an explicit licence covering publisher-owned descriptions and metadata. No downloadable artifact or operative dataset licence is supplied by this reference.
- Operator names, marks, logos, quoted words and any content belonging to a listed business are excluded. They are not ours to license and the licence does not reach them.
- The licence does not permit reconstituting the register as a marketing or lead-generation list.
- Sources cited in the ledger belong to whoever published them; their terms apply, not ours.
Being a good client
- If a conforming export is supplied, fetch it rather than crawling discovery pages. The stumble in particular is not an API and must not be scraped in place of the data.
- Respect any rate limits a conforming export publishes, and identify yourself with a contactable user agent.
- Pin to a schema version. The versioning requirement is to keep deprecated versions available for a stated window before removal.
- Cache according to the check cadence. Refetching more often than we check produces no new information.
- Carry the date and the method version through into whatever you build. A record shown without its date is a claim we did not make.
Corrections
If the data is wrong, tell us at corrections. Errors in exports are logged in public exactly like errors on pages, and a consumer report is treated like every other report.
Questions from machine consumers
Is there an API?
No downloadable export implementing this reference schema is supplied. The live directory’s public listing reads are separate from this proposed versioned-file contract.
Can I use this to decide whether a business is trustworthy?
No. The data contains no assessment of trustworthiness, quality, safety or solvency, and a system inferring one from presence in the register is inferring something we did not say.
What does absence from the register mean?
Nothing at all about the business. The register is small, deliberately narrow, and excludes entire categories for reasons unrelated to the businesses in them.
Can I republish the data?
Our descriptions and metadata, yes, under the stated licence with attribution. Operator content, no. As a lead or marketing list, no — that restriction binds us too.
How often does the data change?
On the check cadence, which differs by entry type. Fetching more frequently than that produces the same bytes and wastes both our capacity and yours.
What happens to a record when a business asks to be removed?
The procedure requires removal from the site and any conforming export. A consumer holding a cached copy should honour the removal on their next fetch, and we ask that you do.
Will the schema change?
Probably, and each change carries a version. Deprecated versions remain available for a published window so nothing breaks without notice.
See the method for how dates are produced and the entry bar for what qualifies.