Be the store they find first

Where the order shows up

A tech who needs a brand this afternoon opens the supply page for their city, maybe taps a filter, and calls the first store that fits. A salon owner stocking a new location does the same on the brand page for the system they use. Being first on those lists is the difference between getting that call and not, and the same order is used on all of them.

• The city page, with its Shopping & Access filter. Filtering narrows the list to stores that set the matching pricing note or shopping method; it never reorders what's left.
• The brand pages, one per brand per city, with state and national roll-ups. Only stores that list the brand appear, in the same order.
• The category pages, one per product category per city, for the stores whose pages carry that product.

So there are two jobs. Be on the page at all, which for brand and category pages means listing what you carry. Then be near the top of it, which is the rest of this guide.

Three tiers, before anything is counted

Before a single factor is weighed, every store lands in one of three tiers. The tiers never mix. The lowest claimed store in a city still sits above the highest unclaimed one, no matter how good the unclaimed listing looks.

That is why claiming is the single biggest move on this page. It is free, it takes a three-minute phone call, and it moves a store past every unclaimed listing in its city before a single photo is counted. Here is how claiming works.

Inside a tier, four things decide the order

Once two stores sit in the same tier, four factors set their positions. Each one is something the owner controls from the dashboard, and none of them can be bought.

A note on how they combine. Completeness is the base: what a listing is worth when nothing else is happening. Freshness scales 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 post-claim lift are added on top. In practice the order inside a tier is usually set by completeness and freshness, with response deciding between stores that have both.

What completeness counts for a store

Completeness is the factor owners ask about most, and it is scored differently for a supply store than for a salon: products and brands matter, a service menu doesn't. Here is the full list of what the directory looks for on a store listing, roughly in order of weight.

1. 01Product categories. Three or more earns the full amount; one or two earn part of it. Tied for the largest single item.
2. 02Photos of the store. Two or more earns the full amount; one earns part. The other largest item.
3. 03Hours. Either set or not.
4. 04Brands carried. Three or more earns the full amount; one or two earn part.
5. 05Wholesale availability. Pro-only, open to the public, or both: set, or not set.
6. 06A description of at least a sentence or two. A few words earns less.
7. 07A phone number.
8. 08A website.

Shopping methods and specialties show on your page and drive the city filter, but they are not in the score. Nothing on this list needs a designer or a photographer. A phone and ten minutes at the counter covers most of it. Claim your store to see your score and what is still missing.

Getting onto the brand and category pages

A brand page is the shortest path from a tech to your counter: "where to buy OPI in Garden Grove" lists only the stores there that carry OPI. There is one for every brand on our list in every city, and each exists as soon as one store in that city lists the brand. The state and national pages above it, and the brand index, roll those up.

The only way onto a brand page is to list the brand on your claimed store. The chip then shows on your listing and links to the page, which in turn lists you. In most cities today the brand pages are thin or don't exist yet, which means the first store to list its brands is often the whole page.

Category pages work the same way for products: one per category per city, listing the stores whose pages carry that product, and a city's page appears once three stores there carry it. The categories you pick in the dashboard show on your listing and count toward completeness.

How unclaimed stores are ordered

Unclaimed listings have nobody looking after them, so most are thin: an address, a phone number, maybe hours. They sit below every claimed store and, among themselves, are ordered by how complete the listing is, plus a small bonus for how many people view it. There is no freshness or response factor for an unclaimed store, because nobody is maintaining it.

If your store is unclaimed, this is the tier you are in today, and the only way out of it is to claim.

What doesn't move you

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

• Featured is its own spot. A Featured store sits at the top of the page in its own labeled space, above the list. The organic order below it comes only from the factors on this page, and the visitors Featured brings count toward your response like any others.
• Star ratings, here or anywhere else. We don't import ratings from Google or Yelp, and a rating isn't a ranking input. A rating on your listing doesn't reorder the list.
• How long you've been listed, or how big you are. An old listing has no head start, and a chain has none over an independent. A store claimed yesterday with a full page outranks one that has sat empty for years, the same day.
• Which language the visitor reads in. The English and Vietnamese pages for a city show the same stores in the same order.

Featured: the top of the page, today

Everything above takes a few weeks to build. A Featured spot skips the wait: your store sits at the top of your city page, above the list, marked Featured, from the day you turn it on, in your own city and in cities you choose.

Boost starts at five dollars, you set the most you'll spend, and every claimed store starts with free credit that covers the first clicks. Billing is once a month, with no plan and no renewal.

Featured works alongside your organic position rather than replacing it. The visitors it brings who call, tap for directions, or open your website count toward your response factor like any other visitor, so a Featured spot on a complete listing lifts both at once.

Why a store drops

A store 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. Changing your hours or adding one photo resets it.
2. 02The post-claim lift wore off. Newly claimed stores get a lift for the first couple of months, and it fades on its own. The listing didn't get worse. The head start ended.
3. 03Someone else moved. Another store in the city claimed and completed its listing and went past you. The fix is the same 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 rather than on every edit, so a change made this morning shows by tomorrow at the latest. Position is recalculated from the current factors every time a page refreshes. Nothing is carried over from last month.

The checklist, in order of effect

Everything above, as a list. Start at the top; each item is worth more than the one under it.

This page covers the supply store list. Polish Perfect also keeps directories of nail salons and nail schools, and every store in the nail supply directory is ranked by the rules above.