How to hae a keek

What is actually on the site

Keek reads official public registers and lists and prints what they say. Companies House for companies and their control chain; the Scottish Charity Register kept by the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator for charities and places of worship; the Food Standards Agency's ratings data for the Food Hygiene Information Scheme; Public Health Scotland for hospitals and dental practices; the Scottish Government's own school list; the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service for court venues; the Care Inspectorate for care services; Historic Environment Scotland for historic places; the Improvement Service's councils' library data; the Scotch Whisky Association's distillery map; and OpenStreetMap with Google Places for the venues behind what's on.

One honest limit, because it is the kind of thing a guide should say rather than leave you to find out: the Land Register of Scotland is not here. A title is a paid search taken one at a time, so a sporting estate record prints what the registers say about who administers it and states plainly that no record there claims an owner.

Type the words you would say out loud

The search reads the words on the cards, not only the names, so a phrase works. Every word you type has to be found somewhere on the record, which means the results get sharper the more specific you are and emptier the more you add. Two or three words is usually the sweet spot.

Everyday local searches

• plumber IV15 registered trades in and around Dingwall, found by the trade words on the record and the outward postcode.
• electrician Dingwall the same question by town rather than postcode.
• bakery Inverness food businesses as the Food Standards Agency lists them, trading name and all.
• cafe Ullapool the same, somewhere smaller.
• community trust Ross-shire development trusts and community groups from the charity register, by council area.

Provenance and ownership

These work because every company card carries its control answer and its address count as searchable words, not just as a line to read.

• distillery controlled outside scotland companies with a distillery in the name whose controlling company is registered outside Scotland.
• distillery controlled from japan the same question with the country named, which is usually the sharper one.
• whisky controlled outside scotland the broader version of it.
• shared address Glasgow companies registered at an office used by 25 or more companies, which is the shape of an agent's desk rather than premises.
• virtual address the sharper tier: 100 or more companies at one registered office, which is a formation mailbox by any other name.
• sporting estate Perthshire estates cross-referenced against the registers, by area.

Three things those words mean, and the site will not let them mean more than that. Controlled outside Scotland means the company at the top of the chain is registered outside Scotland, never that decisions are taken abroad: the register records where the controlling company is registered. No psc filed means the register gives no controller, which is not a clean bill of health. And shared address is a count from the register rather than an accusation: 25 or more companies at one office, or 100 or more for the mailbox tier, with a real group head office read as one where most of the companies at the address share a name.

Food hygiene

The rating is a status the Food Standards Agency publishes, quoted as at the date on the record. It is not a grade Keek invents and not a score.

• takeaway Aberdeen food hygiene pass establishments published as Pass, including the ones that also hold a Pass and Eat Safe award.
• restaurant improvement required establishments the local authority has told to make changes.
• cafe Inverness awaiting inspection businesses where no inspection has been published yet. Awaiting inspection is a status rather than a bad rating: it means nobody has looked and printed the result.

Looking for what's on

Live events are held apart from the civic index on purpose. They are a live lookup under a licence that allows a day's cache and no more, so they are never indexed as Keek's own record and never mixed into company results. The door is the What's on near you button on the front page: it uses your phone's location for gigs, theatre and comedy within five miles over the next seven days, nearest first. You can type any Scottish town instead, and the page will use that.

What Keek will not do

It will not rank a listing above a record because somebody paid. Money buys presentation, never position. It will not print a claim the source does not make: where a source is silent, the record says so rather than filling the gap. And it will not call a record clean because a field is empty.

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