How salons are ranked on Polish Perfect

First, every salon goes into one of three groups

Before anything else is counted, every salon lands in one of three groups. The groups never mix. The lowest claimed salon in a city still sits above the highest unclaimed one, no matter how good the unclaimed listing looks.

That's why claiming is the biggest move on this page. It's free and it takes a three-minute phone call. It puts your salon above every unclaimed salon in your city before a single photo is counted. Here's how claiming works.

Inside a group, four things decide the order

When two salons are in the same group, four things set who's higher. You control every one of them from your dashboard. You can't buy any of them.

Here's how they work together. Completeness is your base. Freshness grows or shrinks that base, so a full listing nobody has touched in a year is worth less than the same listing updated last week. Response and the new-claim lift get added on top.

Most of the time, completeness and freshness set the order. Response decides between salons that have both.

What counts as a complete listing

Owners ask about completeness the most. So here's everything we look for on a salon listing, starting with what counts most.

1. 01Photos of your work. Three or more gets full credit. One or two gets part of it. This is the biggest single item.
2. 02Hours. They're either set or they're not.
3. 03Services. Three or more gets full credit.
4. 04A description of a sentence or two. A few words gets less.
5. 05A phone number.
6. 06A website.
7. 07Specialties, like Gel-X, dip, or nail art.
8. 08A walk-in policy.
9. 09A service menu with prices on at least a few items.

Your address is always there, so it counts the same for every salon. You don't need a designer or a photographer for any of this. Your phone and 10 minutes on a slow afternoon covers most of it. Claim your listing to see your score and what's still missing.

From your city page to the homepage

Your salon can show up in four places: your city page, your state page, the nationwide lists, and the homepage. Think of them as steps. Each one puts you in front of more people, and each one asks a little more of your listing.

1. 01Your city page. Every published salon is here. Claim your listing and you sit above every unclaimed salon in town.
2. 02Your state page. It only shows salons with the basics filled in. Set your hours, add photos, and list your services to get on it.
3. 03The nationwide lists, like every salon in the country for one service. Same idea, with a higher bar. Your listing needs to be about half complete.
4. 04The homepage. The Top-rated salons section picks from claimed salons with at least five reviews, best rated first. It shows one salon per state and changes every day.

The order on your city, state, and nationwide pages comes from the same rules above. So the calls, direction taps, and website clicks you get from your listing lift you on all three at once.

Here's the part owners miss. Lots of calls won't put a bare listing on a state or nationwide page. Filling in your listing gets you onto the page. People contacting you moves you up it. You need both.

How unclaimed salons are ordered

Nobody looks after an unclaimed listing, so most are thin: an address, a phone number, maybe hours. They sit below every claimed salon. Among themselves, they're ordered by how complete the listing is, plus a small bonus for how many people view it. Freshness and response don't count for them, because nobody is keeping them up.

If your salon is unclaimed, this is the group you're in today. The only way out is to claim.

What doesn't move you

A few things owners expect to matter are left out on purpose.

• Featured. It's its own spot. A Featured salon sits at the top of the page in its own labeled space, above the list. The list below it comes only from the rules on this page. The visitors Featured brings do count toward your response, like any others.
• Star ratings, here or anywhere else. We don't import ratings from Google or Yelp, and your Polish Perfect rating doesn't change the order on city, state, or national pages. Reviews show on your listing. The homepage is the only place ratings decide anything.
• How long you've been listed. An old listing gets no head start. A salon claimed yesterday with a full profile outranks one that has sat empty for years, the same day.
• The language someone reads in. The English and Vietnamese pages for a city show the same salons in the same order.

Featured: the top of the page, today

Everything above takes a few weeks to build. Featured skips the wait. Your salon sits at the top of your city page, above the list, marked Featured, from the day you turn it on.

You only pay when someone clicks through to your listing. You set the most you'll pay per click, so there's no monthly fee and no surprise bill. Clicks start around 25 cents each in most cities, and your account comes with free credit that covers the first ones. We bill once a month.

Featured works with your regular spot. It doesn't replace it. When the visitors it brings call you, tap for directions, or open your website, that counts toward your response like any other visitor. So Featured on a complete listing lifts both at once.

It also gets you onto bigger pages sooner. A Featured spot that covers your state or the whole country shows on those pages even before your listing is full enough to earn a place there.

Why a salon drops

A salon that was near the top and slipped almost always hit one of three things.

1. 01Freshness faded. Nothing on the listing has changed in months, so its base is worth less than it was. Change your hours or add one photo and it resets.
2. 02The new-claim lift wore off. Newly claimed salons get a lift for the first couple of months, and it fades on its own. Your listing didn't get worse. The head start ended.
3. 03Someone else moved. Another salon in your city claimed and filled in its listing and went past you. The fix is the checklist below.

How fast a change shows up

A new or newly claimed listing takes its place within a day. Directory pages refresh on a schedule, not on every edit. So a change you make this morning shows by tomorrow at the latest. Your position is worked out fresh every time a page refreshes. Nothing carries over from last month.

Your checklist, biggest win first

Here's everything above as a list. Start at the top. Each item is worth more than the one under it.

This page covers the salon list. Polish Perfect also has directories of nail supply stores and nail schools. Those two have their own rules. See how supply stores rank and how nail schools rank. Every salon in the nail salon directory is ranked by the rules above.