Among the nail salons someone searching in New Berlin, WI is shown, Beautiful Nails and Spa answered every one of its most recent reviews: 10 of its last 10, on a listing of 599 reviews. Beauty 9 Nail & Spa did the same, 10 of 10, on a listing of 155. New Berlin Nails, the most-reviewed nail salon we read at 1,322 reviews, answered 8 of its last 10. Those are the nail salons we can credit for answering; we can't see how the other nail salons we read handled their recent reviews.
Among the barbershops we could measure, Millionaire Barbershop answered the most of its recent reviews: 4 of its last 10, on a listing of 696 reviews. It is the one barbershop we can name for answering. That does not mean no other barbershop replied, because we could not measure every one of the 20 we read. Set beside the nail salons named above, the figures differ: the named nail salons answered 10, 10 and 8 of their last 10, and the named barbershop answered 4.
The listings themselves are a separate measure, counted over each listing's whole history rather than its last 10 reviews. The median barbershop we read carries 40 reviews and a median rating of 5; the three most-reviewed barbershops carry 1,050, 696 and 533. The median nail salon we read carries 33 reviews and a median rating of 4.9; the three most-reviewed carry 1,322, 1,165 and 599.
For a wider reference point, the benchmark measured here is 81%: that is the share of recent reviews a typical measured business answered, across 61 businesses. That figure is measured across all trades together, not hair, nail and barbering businesses alone.
What to do about it
Start with your own Google listing: count how many of your last 10 reviews have your reply under them. That is the same measure behind every reply figure above, so you can set your own number directly beside them.
If you run a nail salon, two of the salons named here answered 10 of 10, and that is the figure to check yourself against. If you run a barbershop, the highest figure we could measure among barbershops was 4 of 10, so a reply to each of your next 10 reviews would put you above every barbershop we could measure. A reply does not need to be long. Thank the person, mention the service or detail they wrote about, and sign it as the owner. A reply is the one part of that exchange you write, and it sits on your listing beside the review it answers.
Barbershops
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Millionaire Barbershop | 4 of 10 | 696 | 5 |
Nail salons
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Beautiful Nails and Spa | 10 of 10 | 599 | 4.8 |
| 2 | Beauty 9 Nail & Spa | 10 of 10 | 155 | 4.6 |
| 3 | New Berlin Nails | 8 of 10 | 1322 | 4.9 |