Frequently Asked Questions

Highstreett is a search engine for Britain’s high streets: it finds what you’re after, tells you who owns each place, and puts the independents first. It works two ways. You can talk to our AI agent, which learns your preferences over time and recommends places based on what you’ve liked before, a bit like Goodreads but for the local cafés, shops, restaurants, and venues you actually visit. Or you can use Highstreett as a straightforward directory: search “Thai restaurants in East London” and browse the results, independents first. The more you review the places you’ve been, the better your recommendations get.

Highstreett is an AI-led platform. When you ask the agent for a recommendation, it reads the context in your profile, searches the Highstreett database first, then searches the wider web within our guardrails. The underlying model we use will change over time. We’ll always pick whichever delivers the best recommendations for the context you’ve given it, not whichever is cheapest or biggest.

If you’d rather not use AI, you don’t have to. You can still use Highstreett as a directory to find and support local businesses.

Independent businesses tend to bank locally, use local suppliers, and employ people who live nearby, so the trade they take in tends to stay with people in the same area.

We built Highstreett to make the independent businesses on a high street easier to find, so they’re competing on a fairer footing with the chains around them.

Verification is something we do business by business, and a verified badge marks the ones we have done. When we verify a business we check three things.

• Is it trading and registered? We use Companies House for this.
• Who owns it? We check the ownership structure through Companies House and the PSC register. A national or multinational chain, a franchise, or a private-equity-owned business doesn’t earn the verified-independent badge — but it isn’t hidden either: it’s listed and labelled for what it is.
• Is it locally owned? Independence is about ownership, not size. A local owner with a few different locations in a city still counts, because the money and the decisions stay local. That is the point: keeping the local economic multiplier turning.

No badge means one of two things, and they are not the same. In the directory it means we have not confirmed that business’s ownership yet. In a search result it can also mean the place is not an independent at all. Search shows what is genuinely nearby, so a chain appears unbadged alongside independents we have not yet checked. The badge is the only positive claim we make; its absence is not a claim either way. Turn on Shop Local to hide the chains; places we haven’t checked yet stay, labelled as unchecked. Ownership can also change after we check. If a business that was independent gets bought by a chain or private equity we do not delete it. We archive it with a “no longer independently owned” badge so its history stays visible. If we have got something wrong, tell us and we will review. Our full methodology is on the Independent Business Index methodology page.

Search shows what is actually near you, chains included, each one labelled for what it is. There is exactly one deliberate exception, and it is a short, fixed list: the well-known national chains you can already find anywhere — the Costas, Greggs and Tescos. We leave those out because a search that returned them would be answering a question nobody asked us. Every other chain is listed like anything else.

Everything that does turn up is shown with independents ahead when it’s close, every result labelled by who owns it, and the ones we have confirmed carry a verified badge. If you want none of the chains at all, the Shop Local toggle hides the chains; places we haven’t checked yet stay, labelled as unchecked. It is off by default, because hiding results is your choice to make and not ours.

We don’t pre-vet quality. That’s what reviews are for. Each visit to a restaurant or shop is going to be a bit different, and we think the aggregate of reviews from people who’ve actually been there is the most honest signal of what to expect.

What we do watch for is review bombing and faked reviews. If a review is flagged and confirmed false we remove it, and repeated violations result in account suspension. We cannot yet confirm that a reviewer visited the business, so treat reviews as accounts from other people rather than verified visits.

Not yet. We’re working on letting businesses take bookings directly through Highstreett, for restaurants, salons, and appointment-based businesses, but it’s not live. For now, Highstreett links you out to the business’s own booking page, website, or phone number.

Highstreett is free to use and free to be listed on, and doesn’t make any money today. Two things may change that: a small commission if you buy a book through one of our links, and a flat per-order fee if we run bookings or delivery for a business. We’ll say so clearly wherever either applies. Rankings aren’t for sale and never will be. We don’t take payment to call a business independent.

We don’t have a paid business membership. If you run a business and want to be listed, send us a request through the business signup page. Listings are free, and you can claim and update yours at no charge. If you’re independent, we verify your ownership against Companies House and give you the verified-independent badge.

Longer term, when we open up direct bookings and other revenue features, businesses will be able to opt into those, but the core directory listing will stay free.

Right now, Highstreett is available through our website at digitalhighstreett.com. Dedicated iOS and Android apps are coming over the next few months.

We’re starting with Lincoln and Bristol, then rolling out to Manchester, Nottingham, and Leeds next. Cities go live once we’ve seeded enough verified independent businesses to make the platform genuinely useful, typically 150 to 300 listings minimum.

If you’d like Highstreett in your city, you can register interest on the British Cities page and we’ll let you know when it’s available.