Company locations

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Where location data comes from

Our location data comes from three sources:

• Companies House (registered address)
• Company websites
• Creditsafe (external provider)

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Companies House

For the overwhelming majority of companies, a registered address is provided via Companies House. We use this postcode as the registered address. Companies are required to keep their own addresses up-to-date.

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Company websites

We extract additional postcodes from the text on company websites. We only look for postcodes on specific pages that are likely to contain correct location information, such as www.example.com/locations. The postcodes extracted from websites must match a standard UK postcode format. We then validate these against the ONS Postcode Directory.

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Creditsafe

We use additional postcodes provided by Creditsafe. Creditsafe use an external provider for trading addresses.

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Verified operating addresses

A location is classified as a verified operating address when there is evidence that a company conducts business from that site. This evidence can come from the company’s own website or from Creditsafe trading-address data, and helps distinguish genuine trading locations from addresses used only for registration or correspondence. A registered office is not treated as an operating address simply because it is registered with Companies House. When we find evidence that the company trades from that site, the same location can be both the registered office and a verified operating address. Many companies, particularly SMEs, operate out of their registered office.

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How we filter non-genuine operating addresses

Some postcodes, particularly those associated with virtual offices, serviced address providers, and professional formation agents, contain an unusually high number of registered companies. To prevent these from appearing as genuine operating locations, we apply a blacklisting rule. A postcode is a candidate for blacklisting if it is an operating address and meets one of the following criteria:

• High density: The postcode falls within the top 0.5% by registered company frequency.
• Professional services: The postcode is flagged by Creditsafe as associated with solicitors or accountants, and the company’s SIC code matches a relevant professional services classification.

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Exemptions

Even if a postcode is blacklisted, an operating address is retained if:

• Website evidence: The company explicitly lists the address on its own website.
• SIC self-evidence: The company is itself a solicitor or accountant operating from its registered office.

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Filtering companies by location

When you filter a company list by a location (a local authority, a postcode and radius, or a custom area), we return any company with at least one address in that area. By default this considers both registered and operating addresses, so a company can appear on the strength of a single branch in the area even when its registered office is elsewhere. You can narrow this:

• Registered address only: Match companies whose Companies House registered office is in the area.
• Operating address only: Match companies with a verified operating presence in the area (an address found on the company’s website or via Creditsafe, and not blacklisted), wherever they are registered.

A genuine operating location is one that is an operating address and is not blacklisted. Blacklisting does not remove the operating-address flag; the two are separate, so a virtual-office or formation-agent postcode can be both an operating address and blacklisted.

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Telling addresses apart in a download

A download lists every address we hold for each company that matched, not only the address that fell inside your filter. So a download can include a company’s addresses outside your area. These columns distinguish them:

• Is Registered Postcode: The Companies House registered office.
• Is Operating Address: There is evidence the company trades from this site.
• Is Blacklisted: A likely virtual office or formation agent. Combine with Is Operating Address to find genuine operating locations (operating and not blacklisted).
• Is Subsidiary Address: The address belongs to a subsidiary of the company rather than the company itself.

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Important notes

If multiple companies are matched to the same website, they will have the same postcodes extracted from that website. A registered address is not necessarily the location of a company’s head office — but it can be, and our system now correctly identifies these cases.