49% of Americans Let Online Reviews Decide Their Salon

Nearly half of Americans say online reviews are a deciding factor when choosing a hair salon, and the vast majority of those people are searching on Google first. According to Salon Today, 49% of Americans are influenced by online reviews when selecting a salon, and 72% use Google to conduct that search. For a salon owner, those two numbers together tell a clear story: your Google review profile is where new client decisions are being made, often before anyone visits your website or picks up the phone.

• What does this data actually mean for a working salon?
• Where exactly are clients making their decision?
• What do reviews actually signal to a potential new client?
• Why This Matters for Hair Salons

What does this data actually mean for a working salon?

The 49% figure is worth sitting with for a moment. It does not mean nearly half of clients might glance at reviews. It means nearly half say reviews influenced their choice, as in those reviews contributed to a yes or a no on your business. That is not soft preference data. That is conversion behavior.

For context, that same pool of consumers could just as easily choose the salon two blocks away if that competitor has more reviews, fresher reviews, or a higher star average. The service quality you deliver inside your four walls does not reach those people until they have already made the call based on what they saw online.

According to SalonSOS, a complete and actively managed Google Business Profile is one of the most direct levers a salon has for local search visibility, with reviews playing a significant role in both ranking position and click-through rate. The combination of ranking and trust signal is what makes reviews structurally important, not just optically nice.

Salons that treat review collection as something that happens naturally, without any consistent process, tend to accumulate reviews slowly and unevenly. That creates a profile that looks quiet, even when the business is busy.

Where exactly are clients making their decision?

According to Salon Today, 72% of consumers use Google to search for a salon. That means the Google local map pack, specifically the three listings that appear at the top of a local search result, is where most new client attention lands first. Salons that appear in those three spots with strong review counts and high ratings have a measurable advantage before a single word of their website is read.

The implication for salon operators is straightforward. A potential new client searching for a salon near her on a Saturday morning is looking at your star rating, your review count, and your most recent review before she looks at anything else. If your last review is six months old, that gap registers as a signal, even if she could not explain exactly why.

This is also where the gap between visibility and reputation becomes real. A salon can rank in the top three results and still lose the booking to the fourth-ranked competitor if that competitor has 200 reviews and a 4.8 star average versus the top listing showing 40 reviews and a 4.1. The relationship between Google Business Profile completeness and local ranking is well-documented, but the review layer is what converts a searcher into a caller.

What do reviews actually signal to a potential new client?

Reviews do more than show satisfaction scores. They answer the specific questions a new client cannot ask until she is already seated in the chair. Is this salon consistent? Do they do color work well? Is the person they booked with actually still there? Are they responsive when something goes wrong?

A review profile with recent, specific, and varied feedback answers those questions without requiring any sales effort. A thin or dated review profile leaves those questions open, and open questions tend to resolve in favor of the next option on the list.

According to SalonSOS, salons that regularly update their Google Business Profiles, including responding to reviews, show stronger local engagement signals that can support better ranking over time. Responding to reviews is not just good client relations. It is a visible indicator to prospective clients that the business is attentive and professionally run.

For salons already doing good work, the review gap is usually not a quality problem. It is a process problem. Most satisfied clients do not leave reviews without a prompt. A simple, consistent ask at checkout or in a post-appointment follow-up text closes that gap faster than most owners expect. For more on building that kind of systematic approach, see this overview on how to get more Google reviews.

Why This Matters for Hair Salons

The 49% influence figure and 72% Google search figure from Salon Today describe a booking environment where reputation is infrastructure, not decoration. Nearly half of the people who could become your next regular client are filtering their options through your review profile right now, on a device in their hand, before they have any other interaction with your business.

Salons with strong, current review profiles do not need to outspend competitors on advertising to win those clients. They just need to show up with the evidence that answers the question a new client is already asking. Salons without that evidence lose the comparison by default, regardless of how good the work actually is.

The practical takeaway is not complicated. Build a consistent process for asking satisfied clients to leave a review, respond to every review you receive, and treat your Google Business Profile as a live document rather than a one-time setup. The clients are already searching. What they find when they do is largely within your control.