Be the school they see first

Where the order shows up

Someone who wants a license opens the nail school page for their city. Maybe they tap a program. Then they call the first school that shows a price. A working tech who wants instructor training does the same on the program page. If you're first on those lists, you get that call. All of them use the same order.

• The city page, with its Programs filter. The filter shows only the schools tagged with that program. It never changes the order.
• The program pages. Each program gets a page in each city, with state and national pages above. Only schools tagged with the program show, in the same order.

So you have two jobs. First, be on the page. Then be near the top of it. The rest of this guide is about the second one.

First, every school goes into one of three groups

Before anything else is counted, every school lands in one of three groups. The groups never mix. The lowest claimed school 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 school above every unclaimed school in your city before a single program is counted. Here's how claiming works.

Inside a group, four things decide the order

When two schools 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 schools that have both.

What counts as a complete school listing

Schools ask about completeness the most. It works differently for a school than for a salon. Programs and tuition matter, and a service menu doesn't. Here's everything we look for on a school listing, starting with what counts most.

1. 01Programs, with tuition on at least one. Listing any program counts a lot. Tuition on any one of them counts almost as much again. Together, they're the biggest item by far.
2. 02Accreditations and approvals. Any one of the five gets full credit.
3. 03Photos of the school. Two or more gets full credit. One gets part of it.
4. 04A description of a sentence or two. A few words gets less.
5. 05A phone number.
6. 06A state board pass rate or a job placement rate. Either one gets full credit, whatever the number is.
7. 07Hours. They're either set or they're not.

Your website, specialties, graduation rate, kit cost, and financial aid options show on your page, but they don't count here. You don't need a designer or a photographer for any of this. Your phone and 15 minutes at the front desk covers most of it. Claim your school to see your score and what's still missing.

Getting onto the program pages

A program page is the shortest path from a student to your front desk. "Esthetics programs in Garden Grove" lists only the schools there tagged with esthetics. A city gets a page for a program once three schools there are tagged with it. There are state and national pages above, and a program index over all of them.

The program pages and the Programs filter on the city page go by program tags we keep for each listing. The programs you add when you edit your page show on your own page with their hours, tuition, and kit cost, and they count toward completeness.

Does your school teach a program but not show on that program's page in your city? Email support@polishperfect.co with your school's name and the program. We'll add the tag by hand.

How unclaimed schools are ordered

Nobody looks after an unclaimed listing, so most are thin: an address, a phone number, maybe hours. They sit below every claimed school. 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 school 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 schools expect to matter are left out on purpose.

• Featured. It's its own spot. A Featured school 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. Ratings don't change the order, and that includes the student reviews on your own page.
• How good your numbers are. Listing a pass rate counts toward completeness. A higher pass rate doesn't count more than a lower one, and we don't compare tuition between schools. Put your real numbers on the page.
• How long you've been listed, or how big you are. An old listing gets no head start. A chain of campuses gets none over a single school. A school claimed yesterday with a full page 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 schools in the same order.

Featured: the top of the page, today

Everything above takes a few weeks to build. Featured skips the wait. Your school sits at the top of your city page, above the list, marked Featured, from the day you turn it on. You can do it in your own city and in other cities you choose.

Boost starts at $5, and you set the most you'll spend. Every claimed school starts with free credit that covers the first clicks. We bill once a month. There's no plan and no renewal.

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.

Why a school drops

A school 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. Update a tuition figure or add one photo and it resets.
2. 02The new-claim lift wore off. Newly claimed schools 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 school 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 update on a schedule, not after every edit. So a change you make this morning shows by tomorrow at the latest. Each time a page updates, we work out your place again from where your listing stands now. 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 nail school list. Polish Perfect also has directories of nail salons and nail supply stores. Every school in the nail school directory is ranked by the rules above.