Twenty barbershops were read in the set someone searching around Prior Lake is shown, and not one of them had answered any of its recent reviews. That is not a trade with thin listings. The three most-reviewed barbershops in that set carry 816, 550 and 440 Google reviews, and the median across the twenty is 120.5. The median rating is 4.9 — one figure for the whole set, which tells you nothing about which listing is which.
Among hair salons, three businesses came back with recent reviews answered. Parlour 9 Salon & Spa answered 10 of its last 10, on a listing with 324 reviews. Fantastic Sams Cut & Color answered 10 of its last 10, with 196 reviews. The Pearl Salon answered 9 of its last 10, with 134. Those are the three answering the most of the twenty hair salons we read; the rest we did not name are simply not described here. The median hair salon in that set has 43 reviews, well under the 120.5 of barbershops and the 176 of nail salons.
Nail salons show a median of 176 reviews and a median rating of 4.5, where barbershops and hair salons both sit at 4.9. T- Luxe Nails & Spa answered 10 of its last 10, with 273 reviews. Kimmi Spa Nails answered 10 of its last 10, with 253. Aura Nails Savage answered 5 of its last 10, and its listing holds 328 reviews.
For context on the wider set: across the 47 businesses we measured in what someone searching in Prior Lake is shown, a typical one answered 79% of its recent reviews. That figure covers the businesses we measured, whatever trade they sit in, so it is not a line drawn under hair and barbering specifically.
What to do about it
Two different windows are at work in these numbers, and the gap between them is where the work sits. The review counts — 816, 550 and 440 on the biggest barbershop listings — are the whole file. The reply counts are drawn only from each business's most recent reviews. So nobody is asking anyone to work back through hundreds of entries; the recent ones are what the counts on this page are built from.
If you are starting from none answered, take the most recent reviews in order and write each one yourself, in the words you would use in the shop. Answer the good ones as well as the difficult ones; a five-star review left silent is a conversation that stopped. A reply that is plainly the same sentence with a different name in it is worth less than a short specific one. And catching up once is a different thing from keeping up — this is a rolling window, so the count slides back down if the habit stops.
Barbershops
We read 20 barbershops businesses here and not one had answered a single one of its ten most recent reviews. The first owner here who replies is the only one doing it.
Hair salons
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Parlour 9 Salon & Spa | 10 of 10 | 324 | 4.9 |
| 2 | Fantastic Sams Cut & Color | 10 of 10 | 196 | 4.5 |
| 3 | The Pearl Salon | 9 of 10 | 134 | 4.7 |
Nail salons
| # | Business | Answered | Reviews | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | T- Luxe Nails & Spa | 10 of 10 | 273 | 4.7 |
| 2 | Kimmi Spa Nails | 10 of 10 | 253 | 4.7 |
| 3 | Aura Nails Savage | 5 of 10 | 328 | 4.8 |