Glossary

The words this site uses, defined by who pays whom and what a visitor can actually do, rather than by what a page looks like or which software happened to build it.

How these definitions are written

Two rules. Every term is defined by the relationship it describes rather than by its appearance, because appearance is the part that is easiest to imitate. And every term links to something concrete on this site, so a definition is never a page that exists on its own.

Where a term has a legally-defined meaning that varies by jurisdiction, the definition says so and points at the source ledger rather than picking one country's version and presenting it as universal.

The listing ecosystem

Aggregator

A site that collects listings from elsewhere rather than compiling them. You are usually reading someone else's data with a new layout on it.

Marketplace

A place where the transaction itself happens on the platform. The platform takes a cut and holds the customer relationship.

Lead-gen site

Looks like a directory; sells your enquiry. The product is the form submission, not the listing. See lead-gen sites dressed as directories.

Listicle

A ranked article. The order is a claim, and anatomy of a top 10 list is about how that claim is usually made.

Doorway page

A page built from a template with a name or place swapped in, existing to be found rather than read. We publish none — see the Line.

Terms from this register

Entry bar

The six criteria and the exclusions every entry must clear. Published at the entry bar and versioned.

Check

A dated confirmation that a business was reachable and recognisable on a stated day. Procedure at the method.

Check log

The record every displayed date is bound to. A date without a matching row does not publish.

Staleness threshold

The age past which a check is flagged rather than trusted. Values are in the agent contract.

Tombstone

A record of a business that has closed, kept rather than deleted. Index at gone.

Refusal pattern

An anonymised composite of submissions that failed the bar for the same reason. See the refusal file.

The null rule

Where a value is unknown it is published as null, never inferred. A null is information, not an absence.

Rotation

The selection process behind the stumble, with rules published at how the stumble works.

Terms operators use for their own pages

Shopfront

Your own destination, under your control, where someone can work out what you sell and act on it.

Landing page

A single page built for one specific arrival. Useful, but not a substitute for a shopfront.

Storefront

A shopfront on someone else's platform. You control the contents, they control the rules and the exit.

Listing

An entry about you on someone else's site, which you may or may not control and may or may not be able to remove.

The differences that matter are control and exit risk, which is what your own site vs a marketplace stall vs a social profile only compares.

Address terms

Three words routinely used interchangeably, with real consequences for what ends up published about a person. Trading address, registered address and service address are not the same thing, their meanings vary by jurisdiction, and the overlap catches home-run businesses out constantly.

We never publish a residential address in any of those roles. The detail is at real places, checked and in trading address, registered address, service address.