Google Reviews for Hair and Beauty Salons: A Working Guide
Hair and beauty runs on word of mouth and on people coming back. Whether a stranger walks through your door is settled before they ever speak to you — by a star rating and by the photographs other people have put up. For an Australian salon, running the Google profile properly is not marketing admin. It is a second chair that never takes a day off.
Why salons are built for this
Restaurants have a hard time asking for reviews. The meal ends, the card goes through, everyone leaves. Salons have the opposite problem, which is to say no problem at all: the appointment is long and the relationship is close. A cut, a set of nails, a facial — that is an hour or two of conversation. By the end of it, asking for a review is not a sales move. It is one more thing said to somebody you have been talking to all morning.
There is a second advantage the trade rarely uses properly. The result is visible. A new colour, a fresh set, skin that looks better than it did when the client sat down — people want to show that to somebody. The work is not manufacturing enthusiasm. It is pointing enthusiasm that already exists at a Google profile instead of letting it evaporate in the car park.
The four moments worth asking in
Asking at random gets nothing. Asking at the right moment gets a review most of the time, and the right moments in a salon are predictable enough to write on a card by the till.
- The mirror moment. The chair turns, the client sees the result, and the face changes. That is the peak, and it lasts about ten seconds. “If you are happy with it, a review on Google helps other people find us” lands naturally here and almost nowhere else.
- While you are taking the photo. With permission, photograph the finished work. Sending it to the client gives you the obvious follow-on: “I will send you the picture — and if you have a second, you are welcome to put it up with a review.”
- At the counter. A QR stand next to the card machine. Paying takes fifteen seconds in which the client has nothing to do and their phone is already in their hand.
- The same-day message. For anyone who did not get to it, one thank-you text or message that evening with the review link in it. Same day, not three days later.
One practical note: pick two of those four and do them reliably rather than trying all four and doing none of them properly. The mirror and the counter are the pair most salons can actually sustain.
Photographs do the arguing for you
In this trade a review with a picture is worth several without. Text can only claim the colour turned out well; an image settles it. Two sources of images are worth building deliberately — what clients attach to their own reviews, and what you post to the profile gallery yourself.
| What it is | Why it works | How to build it |
|---|---|---|
| Client review with a photo | The most persuasive thing on your profile — a real result, posted by someone with nothing to gain | Mention the option when you invite, and never push it with anyone who would rather not |
| Your own gallery of work | Shows a browsing stranger the standard and the range, and keeps the profile looking current | Three to five new images a week, with permission for anything identifiable |
| Reviews that name the stylist | Builds a following for individual staff and gives new clients someone specific to book with | Have the team use their own name in the invitation |
Permission is not a formality here. Faces, before-and-afters and anything taken in the salon belong to the client until they say otherwise, and it takes one upset person to turn a good gallery into a problem. Ask, and keep a note of who said yes.
Tie reviews to the rebooking
Salons live on people coming back, and there is a useful overlap: the client willing to write something nice is usually the client most likely to rebook. Treat the two as one habit rather than two jobs. The clients who have reviewed are worth a slightly warmer reminder when they are due, and the loop — happy, review, rebook, review again — builds a profile that grows on its own.
The other half of the job is the unhappy ones, and this trade produces them honestly. A colour that lifted brassy, a forty-minute wait on a Saturday, a set that dropped in a week. Answer quickly, answer without arguing, and offer to put it right in the chair. A correction done well turns a one-star into a regular more often than anyone expects — and even when it does not, the next person reading the profile sees a salon that fixes things rather than one that defends itself.
Frequently asked questions
Clients say yes and then forget. How do I fix that?
Shorten the gap. A QR stand at the counter while the card terminal is thinking gives you fifteen seconds when the client is still in the room and still pleased. If it does not happen there, send one thank-you message with the link the same day. Waiting three days is where most of the conversion goes — the memory fades, and so does the motivation.
Our stylists move around a lot. Are we building reviews for someone else?
No. The rating and the review history belong to the business listing, not to the individual. If a stylist leaves, the reviews stay. It is still worth coaching the team to invite in a way that mentions the salon as well as themselves, so the profile reads as a place people like rather than one person people liked.
Can we offer a discount on the next service for leaving a review?
No. Google’s policies prohibit incentivised reviews, and the ACCC has taken a dim view of reviews obtained through inducements — it goes to whether the reviews are misleading. You can ask everybody, every time, and make it easy. You cannot pay for it, discount for it, or run a prize draw on it.
Should we ask clients to attach a photo?
Ask, but lightly, and only where the client has already been happy to be photographed. A review with a photo of the actual result carries more weight than three lines of text, because the next person can see what they are buying. Never upload a client’s photo yourself without clear permission, and be careful with anything showing a face.
How many photos should the salon itself be posting?
A handful a week is plenty, and consistency matters more than volume. Fresh work in the profile gallery tells a browsing client the place is busy and current. A gallery that has not been touched since last winter says the opposite, whatever the star rating says.
A client is unhappy with a colour. Do I reply publicly or ring them?
Both, in that order of caution. Reply briefly and without argument, acknowledge it, and offer to put it right. Then take the detail offline. Colour corrections are the one complaint in this trade that is genuinely fixable, and a client who comes back in and leaves happy will often update the review without being asked.
What should a bad review reply actually say?
Sorry it was not right, here is who to contact, we would like the chance to fix it. Three lines. Do not explain the technical reason the colour lifted the way it did, do not mention what the client asked for, and never suggest they are misremembering. The reply is written for the next person reading the profile, not for the reviewer.
How many reviews does a salon need before it makes a difference?
There is no magic number, but the arithmetic is worth knowing: on a base of twenty, one bad review visibly moves the average; on a base of two hundred, it barely registers. The point of asking every week is less about any single review and more about building a base big enough that a bad Saturday cannot dent you.
Should the invitation mention the stylist by name?
It usually helps. People write more, and more specifically, when they have a person in mind, and specific reviews read as genuine to both browsers and search engines. Just keep the salon name in the sentence too.
Is it worth doing this if we are booked out already?
That is exactly when to do it, because it costs nothing while the chairs are full and it is the only thing that keeps them full when the diary goes quiet in February. Reviews collected in a good month are what carry a bad one.
Turn every happy client into the next booking
Client acquisition is the most expensive line in a salon’s year, and Google reviews are very nearly free. AI REVIEW sets up the invitation flow, the follow-ups and the reply handling for Australian hair and beauty businesses, so the asking happens every day without anyone at the front desk having to remember it. Talk to us about your profile.
