A buyer reads it with a register open in the next tab
The careful reader of a B2B about page is a procurement lead with your quote on the desk. They’ll compare each line with a public register, a certificate database and your invoice.
Google’s raters start on that page too. The September 2025 Search Quality Rater Guidelines send them to the “About us” page “as a starting point” for judging trust. They’re also asked to identify who “is responsible for the website”.
We’d write the page as a set of facts, each with the place it can be checked.
Legal name, number and address, spelled as the register spells them
Put the registered legal name, the company number, the jurisdiction and the registered office on the page. If you trade under a brand, show both names and say which is which.
In the UK it isn’t optional. A limited company shows its registered number and office, where it’s registered and that it’s limited, and gov.uk lists websites next to letters and order forms. Germany’s § 5 DDG adds the legal form, a representative, the register number and the VAT ID. All of it must be “leicht erkennbar und unmittelbar erreichbar”, which we translate as easy to spot and directly reachable.
Assume your buyer checks. Companies House is free. Delaware charges $10 for an entity’s status and $20 for the longer record. The EU’s VIES answers valid or invalid for a VAT number and calls itself “a search engine (not a database)”. One typo in the legal name, and the page describes a company that doesn’t exist.
Years in business and the incorporation date
Write the year your current company was registered. If the business is older than the company, give both years.
Companies House shows the date of incorporation and every previous company name, so a line like “since 1987” gets checked in 1 search.
We’d leave out combined experience. In May 2026 the UK’s advertising regulator, the ASA, upheld a complaint about an About Us page claiming “over 200 years of combined experience”. It read the claim as experience in the exact work on sale, which staff qualifications didn’t prove.
Our draft would start from the register extract, the certificates and the headcount report, and any figure nobody can check would stay out.
Capacity and certificates a buyer can verify
Name each site by town, with floor area and the machines that set your capacity. Give headcount with the month you counted it. For each certificate, give the standard with its edition, the certification body, the certificate number, the scope and the expiry date.
Capacity claims invite a visit, and a buyer able to count your machines may make one. UK guidance under the Procurement Act 2023 says site visits, samples and audits “might be appropriate in some circumstances but not all”.
Certificates carry 3 traps. ISO “does not perform certifications or accredit certification bodies”, so “certified by ISO” is wrong, and your buyer verifies with the certification body instead. The ISO logo is off limits too: certified companies “should use the certification body’s logo, not the ISO logo”.
The third is new. ISO 9001:2026 was published on 16 September 2026, and holders of 2015 certificates have until 30 September 2029 to move across. From this post’s date that leaves 35 months with both editions in use, so “ISO 9001 certified” no longer says which one you hold.
Who does the work, and which parts go out
Say which roles are in-house, how many people hold them, and which parts go to outside firms. If you name any directors on a UK site, gov.uk says you must list all of them.
Public buyers ask outright. The UK’s Central Digital Platform collects a supplier’s connected persons, such as people with significant control. If a winner relied on other suppliers to qualify, the award notice names them, guarantors aside. On US small-business set-asides, FAR 52.219-14 caps the share of the government’s payment that a services contractor passes to subcontractors who aren’t similarly situated.
A team photo can’t be looked up on any register, so we’d show names and roles that also appear on one.
We raised the same question for writing suppliers in judging a B2B content writing service. Our own pages state this field plainly: the person who reads your brief is the person who writes and hands over the text.
Dated client counts and permitted logos
Give the number of customers with the date you counted them, and define the word, for example as accounts that paid in the last 12 months. Show a logo only with the customer’s written permission, and keep that letter on file.
Logos say more than you meant. In the May ASA ruling, insurers’ logos on the site suggested a partnership, and the company confirmed “no formal arrangements, partnerships or referral mechanisms”. A count without a date has the problem we covered in a page an assistant can quote: the claim and its proof sit apart.
The trouble with “we are passionate”
Nobody can check “we are passionate”, so it can’t mislead anyone, but it takes the line on the page where a checkable fact would go.
A regulator reads “leading” and “globally recognised” as facts. In March 2026 the ASA upheld a complaint about a B2B firm’s “panel of independent industry experts”, because it hadn’t seen evidence of who those experts were. Both 2026 rulings began with a complaint from the same competitor.
Take a fictional sheet-metal shop. “We are passionate about quality” becomes “1 site of 6,000 m², 3 laser cutters, 2 press brakes up to 4 m, ISO 9001:2015 since 2019”. Each figure could be checked, and a competitor has nothing to report.
Add the work you turn down, too. A supplier who refuses nothing gives a buyer nothing to test, which we argued in what a B2B content agency does.
The block that goes above the story
Put the facts in one plain-text block near the top, and the story underneath. Fill this in from your documents:
Legal name: [as registered]
Trading as: [brand]
Company no.: [number], [register]
Registered office: [address]
VAT ID: [number]
Trading since: [year]
Incorporated: [date]
Sites: [town], [m²], [output]
People: [headcount], [month]
Certificate: [standard:edition]
[body], no. [number]
scope [scope], expires [date]
In-house: [roles]
Subcontracted: [which parts]
Customers: [count], as of [date]
We don't do: [list]Repeat the legal name, number and registered office in the footer of every page. Then mark up the same facts with Google’s Organization structured data, updated 8 September 2026, on your home page or a single about page. Its fields include legalName, foundingDate, numberOfEmployees, vatID and leiCode. Google says the markup “can help Google better understand your organization’s administrative details”.
The same facts serve the sites that mention you, covered in mentions on other sites.
Sources
- gov.uk, Signs, stationery and promotional material, Get information about a company, Central Digital Platform factsheet, updated 23 June 2026, and Conditions of Participation, updated 17 August 2026. UK only.
- § 5 DDG, current version. Germany only.
- Delaware Division of Corporations and the EU’s VIES page, both read 18 October 2026.
- ISO help centre on verifying a certification, 9 December 2025, and the ISO logo, 7 May 2026. ISO/TC 176 release note, 23 September 2026.
- FAR 52.219-14, clause dated October 2022. US federal set-asides only.
- Google, Organization structured data, 8 September 2026, and Search Quality Rater Guidelines, 11 September 2025. The guidelines describe raters’ work only.
- ASA rulings of 18 March and 13 May 2026, both upheld. Unlinked, as each names the firm.
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