How to verify the company behind an online shop: registers, VAT numbers and domain records

Every real shop is run by a real legal entity: a company or a registered sole trader with a name, an address and a number in a public register. Fake shops either invent one, borrow a real company's details, or leave the page blank. Checking takes ten minutes and does not require any tool you have to pay for. This guide walks through it in the order that finds problems fastest.

Step 1: Find the legal notice

Look for a page called "About", "Contact", "Imprint", "Impressum", "Legal notice", "Terms" or "Privacy". EU law requires a trader selling online to show its name, geographic address, email address and, where it has one, its register and VAT number; Germany and Austria require a full Impressum. What you want to write down:

• The exact legal name (the "Ltd", "B.V.", "GmbH", "SAS", "S.L." part matters).
• A street address, not a P.O. box or a "virtual office".
• A registration number and, if shown, a VAT number.
• A phone number and a non-webmail email address (an @gmail.com address for a "company" is a warning).

No legal name anywhere, or only a contact form: stop here. A shop that will not say who it is has decided not to be found.

Step 2: Look the company up in the register

Registers are public and free to search. Use the one for the country in the address, not the country the shop claims to ship from:

• Netherlands: KVK Handelsregister (kvk.nl). Search by name or KVK number.
• United Kingdom: Companies House (find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk). Shows incorporation date, officers and filed accounts.
• Germany: Handelsregister (handelsregister.de) or the Unternehmensregister.
• France: the government's Annuaire des Entreprises (annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr) for SIREN and SIRET numbers.
• Spain: Registro Mercantil via registradores.org; Belgium: the KBO/BCE; Italy: registroimprese.it.
• United States: the Secretary of State business search of the state in the address; there is no national register.

What you are checking: that the company exists, that its registered name and address match the shop, that it was not incorporated last month, and that its activity is actually retail. A registration number that returns nothing, or a company whose register entry is a different business in a different city, ends the check.

Step 3: Validate the VAT number

For an EU company, paste the VAT number into the European Commission's VIES tool. A valid number returns the registered name and address, which you can compare to the shop's legal notice. An invalid number on a shop that charges VAT is a strong sign that the identity is borrowed or made up. UK VAT numbers can be checked on HMRC's "check a VAT number" service.

Step 4: Check the domain itself

The company can be real and old while the domain is three weeks old, which is exactly how brand-impersonation shops work. A WHOIS or RDAP lookup on the domain shows its creation date. Compare it to what the shop claims ("family business since 1998") and to the company's incorporation date. Then look the domain up in the Wayback Machine: a site that was a Chinese parts wholesaler last year and a Scandinavian fashion boutique today has changed hands.

Step 5: Test the address and the phone number

Put the street address into a map with street-level imagery. A retail company at a residential terrace, a car park, or a serviced-office block shared with three hundred other names is worth a second thought, not an automatic fail; a company address that does not exist is a fail. Then call the phone number during business hours. Real shops answer, or at least have a voicemail in the right language with the right company name.

Step 6: Look for the same company elsewhere

Search the legal name, not the shop name, in quotes. A real trading company leaves traces: a Trustpilot or Google profile under that name, a LinkedIn page with employees, a mention in a trade register bulletin, a marketplace storefront, a press mention. Zero results for a company that claims years of trading is a mismatch. Also search the address and the phone number on their own; scammers reuse both across shop after shop.

What the mismatches mean

• No legal name at all: treat as anonymous. Do not pay by any method you cannot reverse, and preferably do not pay.
• A real company, wrong line of business: the identity is probably borrowed. The real company is often a victim too.
• Real company, real address, domain registered recently: could be a new web shop of an existing business, or an impersonator. The company's own known website, or a phone call, settles it.
• Everything checks out: the shop is run by an identifiable company. That is a necessary condition for trust, not a guarantee of good service. Now read the reviews and check the payment methods.

Do it faster

A trust check pulls the domain age, the public reports and the review signals together in one place, and flags when a shop looks like a copy of a known brand. It does not replace looking up the register entry for an expensive order, but it tells you within seconds whether it is worth the ten minutes.