MEET the man who is helping to clean up the UK’s “digital high street”. Anyone in business will tell you there is a lot of clutter on the internet and a Brighton business is leading the way in helping big companies manage their brand online. MiShop.local started five years ago and is growing a reputation as the go-to company for those wanting to fix their local online presence.

David Whatley, the founder and managing director, feels his company is helping to cement Brighton’s image as a hub for innovative digital business.

Here, he explains how and why his company is helping brands clean-up their image on the digital high street.

OUR high streets are kept clean by an army of sweepers constantly cleaning up litter, but have you thought about the growing pile of “digital litter” cluttering our digital high streets and who is cleaning it up?

The “digital litter” we are talking about here is the various out-of-date information on business listing sites and directories.

We are all familiar with listing sites such as Yell.com and Thomsonlocal.co.uk but, unbeknown to most of us, there are hundreds of other listing sites that list information about high street businesses including addresses, telephone numbers, opening times and services.

But the high street is in a constant state of change.

Businesses will update information on their website, but who changes all the details on the listing sites?

Who adds new business details and ensures the previous ones are removed?

Who checks the Google Map Pin is pointing in the right place?

And why does this matter?

Look at Woolworths, which closed all its branches in 2008.

There are still thousands of listings for Woolworths stores littering the internet.

Many businesses wrongly assume that if a customer wants to find out about them they will go directly to their website, but business listings are important because they influence a business’s local online search presence – search engines look to local listing sites to help them work out who to display and how to rank them.

If this is inconsistent, search engines – and customers – can get confused.

Customers can also be left frustrated if the listing leads to a dead end.

The reality is most businesses don’t manage their listings. Someone needs to clean it up.

That’s where the folks at MiShop.local comes in.

More and more companies are waking up to the fact that bad listings can have a detrimental effect.

We think of what we do as good housekeeping because customers expect brand listings to be clean and correct.

It doesn’t sound exciting but someone has to do it and the benefits improve local search performance and customer satisfaction.