Why Do AI Assistants Use Our Registered Office Instead of Our Operational Headquarters?
AI assistants use your registered office instead of your operational headquarters because the registered office is often the most official, most repeated address about your company. It sits in public company registers, in legal identifier records and in regulatory filings. On your own site, it appears in the privacy policy, the terms and the footer, which may be the only pages that show a full street address. If your contact and about pages give the headquarters only as a city, or leave it out, assistants take the address they can find. The fix is to label both addresses clearly on your site. Mark up the headquarters in structured data, and correct the profiles that hold a separate "headquarters" field, such as your LinkedIn page, Wikidata and business databases.
Where does the registered address come from?
- Company registers. In the UK, a company's registered office address is on the public register at Companies House. In the US, a state business registry records a registered agent's address. Many companies use an accountant, a lawyer or a formation agent for this. One registered agent building in Wilmington, Delaware, is the registered address of hundreds of thousands of companies.
- Your own legal pages. UK companies must show their registered office address, registered number and place of registration on their websites. Privacy policies often give the registered office as the data controller's address. These pages are crawlable, stable and full of precise details.
- Legal identifier records. Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) records hold both a legal address and a headquarters address, and data aggregators do not always keep the difference.
- Filings and invoices. Regulatory filings, public contracts and supplier listings copy the registered address.
- Business databases that import register data and label it "headquarters".
Meanwhile, the headquarters may appear only as "London" on the about page, as a map embed loaded by script, or in a job advert. Why assistants may treat an address that is not staffed as a real location is covered in why Google AI Overview lists your virtual office as a real storefront.
Why does the difference matter?
The wrong address creates practical problems. Candidates turn up for interviews at an accountant's office. Journalists and analysts describe you as based in a city where you have no staff. Customers send returns or legal documents to the wrong place, and procurement teams reject you for "no local presence". Local and regional recommendations also depend on where assistants think you are. A company registered in one city and operating in another may be left out of "companies in [operating city]" answers entirely.
What should your website say?
Show both addresses, each with a plain label, in text:
| Label | What it is | Where to show it |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Where leadership and most staff work, and where visitors go | Contact page, about page, careers page, footer |
| Registered office | The legal address on the public register, for legal correspondence | Footer, legal pages, contact page with "no visitors" if it is not staffed |
| Other offices | Staffed locations with their own addresses | Locations or contact page |
A contact page could say: "Our headquarters is at [street address, city]. Our registered office, used for legal correspondence only, is at [address]." That sentence gives assistants both facts and the relationship between them. Repeat "headquartered in [city]" in your about page and your press boilerplate. How to check whether assistants repeat your boilerplate is covered in how to test whether AI assistants use your approved company boilerplate.
What about structured data?
Add Organization markup on your home or about page. Google's documentation describes the address property as the physical or mailing address of your organisation. It says you can provide multiple addresses if you have locations in several cities, states or countries. Use the headquarters as the main address, keep the markup consistent with the visible text, and add your legal name with legalName. If the registered office is not a place anyone works, you do not need to mark it up as a location. Keep it in the visible legal text where the law requires it.
Which external profiles have a headquarters field?
Many profiles store "headquarters" separately from the registered address. Check each one:
- LinkedIn company page: the headquarters location in the page's about section.
- Wikidata: the headquarters location property on your company's item, if one exists. Follow the site's rules on conflicts of interest, and suggest changes with a source.
- Wikipedia: the infobox headquarters, if you have an article, changed through an edit request with a source.
- Business databases such as company data providers and startup databases.
- LEI record: ask your LEI issuer to check that the headquarters address is correct.
- Google Business Profile: only for addresses where you serve customers in person. A registered office where no one works should not have one.
- Industry directories and review sites that list an address.
How Wikipedia details feed into AI answers is covered in whether an inaccurate Wikipedia infobox affects ChatGPT or Gemini answers about your company.
Should you change the registered office instead?
Sometimes. If your headquarters is suitable, using it as your registered office removes the conflict at the source. In the UK, a registered office must be an "appropriate address", where post will come to the attention of someone acting for the company and delivery can be confirmed, and PO boxes are no longer allowed. Many companies keep a separate registered office for good reasons, such as a formation agent, privacy for a founder's home or a group structure. In that case, clear labelling is the fix.
How do you test what assistants say?
Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI features, several times each:
- "Where is [company] headquartered?"
- "What is [company]'s address?"
- "Where are [company]'s offices?"
- "[Industry] companies in [headquarters city]"
- "Does [company] have an office in [registered office city]?"
Record which address each answer gives, whether it labels it correctly, and which sources it cites. The cited source tells you which profile or page to fix. Retest a month after changes.
What might an illustrative case look like?
Consider an illustrative software company registered at its accountant's office in one city, with its 60 staff in another city 150 miles away. Assistants described it as "headquartered in" the registered office's city and listed the accountant's address. Its website gave the full registered office address in the footer and privacy policy, but only the headquarters' city on the about page. It also left the company out of "software companies in [operating city]" answers. The company added both addresses with labels to its contact page, and headquarters markup to its about page. It corrected its LinkedIn page and two business databases, and asked its LEI issuer to update the headquarters address. Two months later, most answers gave the correct headquarters. The company began appearing in answers about software companies in its operating city.
What do people ask about registered offices and AI answers?
Is it wrong to show the registered office on our site?
No. In some countries it is required. Label it clearly as the registered office, and show the headquarters with equal clarity.
Will changing our LinkedIn headquarters fix it on its own?
It helps, but assistants draw on many sources. Fix your own site first, then the profiles cited in wrong answers.
How long does it take for answers to change?
Search-based assistants can change within weeks of the sources updating. Answers drawn from model knowledge can take longer.
Published by The Kovmere Team · updated Sep 29, 2026 · More resources