Editorial policy

What gets published

A business is listed when we can verify it exists and attach something to it beyond a name and an address. A listing with nothing behind it is held back rather than published thin, because a page that tells a reader nothing wastes their click and drags down every other page on the site.

A category page exists only where there are enough businesses to make it worth opening. A town goes live only when its listings have been checked. We would rather cover fewer places properly.

How listings are ordered

By rating, weighted by the number of ratings, so a business with three five-star reviews does not outrank one with four hundred averaging 4.6. Paying does not move a business up. See how we are funded.

Sourcing

Every figure names its source and, where it matters, the date it covers. The full list is on the methodology page. Where a source cannot support a claim, we do not make the claim: an empty field renders empty rather than being filled with a guess.

We quote a business's own words as the business wrote them, including the punctuation. We do not rewrite somebody's description to suit our house style, and we do not invent copy for a business that has written none.

Where AI is used, and where it is not

Software, including AI tooling, is used to gather and organise data: to match a business to a category, to find a business's own website, to work out which listings sit within walking distance of each other. That is sorting, and it is checked.

What we do not do is generate filler. No page on this site exists to hold keywords, and no description of a business is written by a machine pretending to know the business. Where text is the business's own, it is theirs. Where a figure is somebody else's, they are named.

Corrections

Mistakes get fixed rather than quietly edited away. If a correction changes what a page said in a way that matters, the page says so. Policy pages carry the date they were last reviewed, and data pages the date their figures were fetched.

Corrections go to hello@nearbyuk.com and reach Ben Criddle, who is accountable for what this site publishes.

Removals

A business that wants its listing removed can have it removed, without giving a reason. A business that wants its listing corrected can have it corrected. A business that wants a competitor removed, or a genuine rating hidden, cannot.

What we will not publish

• A rating we did not receive, or a rating of our own for any business.
• Crime data presented as though it names a street or a business. The source data is anonymised and we say so wherever it appears.
• A claim about a business that the business has not made itself.
• Sponsored content that is not marked as sponsored.
• Anything on the information pages that somebody paid to have there.