Observes Verify

Make your business easier to verify online.

Observes checks whether your website clearly identifies the registered company behind it. If key company details are missing, Observes generates the correct disclosure from the register and checks your site again after you add it. The check is free, needs no account, and shows you exactly what it could and could not find.

Companies House company number Your website Check my website identity

Why a business ends up here

Many legitimate UK company websites do not say which registered company operates them, or say it only in part: a trading name in the header, a phone number, a postcode, and no registered name, number or office anywhere a reader or a verification system can find. When that happens, Observes cannot independently verify which registered company operates the site, and says so plainly:

We could not independently verify the registered company operating this website from the information currently displayed.

That is not an accusation. UK registered companies are generally required to show specific registered-company information on their websites, and adding it also makes the company easier for customers, suppliers and verification systems to identify. Observes shows what appears to be missing and gives you the correct text from the register.

What the check does

1. You enter the Companies House company number and the website address, together. The check answers for that pair only; it is not a way to look up one from the other.
2. Observes compares what its crawler observed on the site's own pages with the register record.
3. You see, for each of the four registered-company details, whether it was found, not found on the pages Observes observed, could not be checked because the site did not let Observes read it, or not checked yet.
4. Where details are missing, the same screen generates the disclosure block from the current register record, as text and as HTML, with the date it was last checked against the register.
5. You add it to your website. If Observes then reads it on your site, the relationship between your company and your website becomes verified through the same evidence rules Observes applies to every website.

What it looks for

The four details a registered company's website is expected to show, each read from the site's own pages and compared with the register:

• the registered company name;
• the company number;
• the registered office address;
• the part of the United Kingdom in which the company is registered: England and Wales, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

The registered name is required on every company website by regulation 24(2) of the Names and Trading Disclosures Regulations 2015; the place of registration, registered number and registered office address on websites by regulation 25(1). Regulation 20 asks for them to be readable with the naked eye, so Observes reads visible text, not images.

Why it is worth doing

Easier to verify

Customers, suppliers and automated verification systems can more clearly identify the legal entity behind the website.

Clear business identity

The site shows who the visitor is actually dealing with.

Helps distinguish the legitimate site

A clear first-party legal identity makes impersonation and confusion easier to spot.

The registered-company disclosure, correct

Observes shows the core details that appear to be missing and provides the text from the register, so nothing has to be typed from memory.

What Observes does not do

Observes is not a regulator and is not affiliated with Companies House. It makes no accusation, never labels a website compliant or non-compliant, and never treats a page it could not reach as evidence that something is missing. It gives no score, no rank and no badge. A statement a business makes to Observes is recorded as that business's statement, with the date, and never by itself turns into a verified relationship: verification comes only from what Observes independently observes on the site.