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 page for the brand they use. Being first on those lists is how you get that call. All of them use the same order.

• Your city page, with its Shopping & Access filter. A filter only narrows the list to stores that set that pricing note or shopping method. It never changes the order of the stores that are left.
• The brand pages. There's one per brand per city, plus state and national pages that gather them up. Only stores that list the brand show, in the same order.
• The category pages. There's one per product category per city, for the stores whose pages carry that product.

So you have two jobs. First, get on the page. For brand and category pages, that means listing what you carry. Then get near the top, which is what the rest of this guide covers.

First, every store goes into one of three groups

Before anything else is counted, every store lands in one of three groups. The groups 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's why claiming is the biggest move on this page. It's free and it takes a three-minute phone call. It puts your store above every unclaimed store in your city before a single photo is counted. Here's how claiming works.

Inside a group, four things decide the order

When two stores 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 stores that have both.

What counts as a complete store listing

Owners ask about completeness the most. It works differently for a supply store than for a salon. Products and brands count, and a service menu doesn't. Here's everything we look for on a store listing, starting with what counts most.

1. 01Product categories. Three or more gets full credit. One or two gets part of it. This is tied for the biggest single item.
2. 02Photos of the store. Two or more gets full credit. One gets part of it. This is the other biggest item.
3. 03Hours. They're either set or they're not.
4. 04Brands you carry. Three or more gets full credit. One or two gets part of it.
5. 05Wholesale availability: pro-only, open to the public, or both. It's either set or it's not.
6. 06A description of a sentence or two. A few words gets less.
7. 07A phone number.
8. 08A website.

Shopping methods and specialties show on your page and power the city filter, but they don't count toward completeness. You don't need a designer or a photographer for any of this. Your phone and 10 minutes at the counter covers most of it. Claim your store to see your score and what's 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. Every brand on our list has a page in every city, and the page appears as soon as one store in that city lists the brand. The state and national pages, and the brand index, gather them all up.

The only way onto a brand page is to list the brand on your claimed store. The brand then shows on your listing as a chip that links to the brand page, and the brand page lists you. In most cities today, brand pages are thin or aren't there yet. So the first store to list its brands is often the whole page.

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

How unclaimed stores are ordered

Nobody looks after an unclaimed listing, so most are thin: an address, a phone number, maybe hours. They sit below every claimed store. 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 store 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 store 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 ratings don't count toward your spot. A rating on your listing doesn't change the order of the list.
• How long you've been listed, or how big you are. An old listing gets no head start, and a chain gets none over an independent store. A store 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 stores in the same order.

Featured: the top of the page, today

Everything above takes a few weeks to build. Featured 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. You can turn it on in your own city and in other cities you choose.

Boost starts at $5, and you set the most you'll spend. Every claimed store 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 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. Change your hours or add one photo and it resets.
2. 02The new-claim lift wore off. Newly claimed stores 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 store 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 supply store list. Polish Perfect also has directories of nail salons and nail schools. Every store in the nail supply directory is ranked by the rules above.