Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hairstylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen? Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you weren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer. Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists. I’m Britt Siva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Siva and darn it a social media platform is updated again and now we have to learn to use it differently. Hate it when that happens. I feel like every year I have to record a couple of these. Social media is the lifeline to our business these days, but it’s also frustrating because it’s ever changing. Today we’re talking about Google Business Profile formerly known as Google My Business. You might know it casually is the place where people leave Google reviews. There was a major shift in update announced coming out of Google April of 2026. I heard about the changes when they happened. I’m recording this podcast about three weeks after the changes were rolled out. Over the last week, I’ve been sent posts about these changes several times and if you were somebody who sent me one of these dams, you probably got a response from me that said something like, “Tell me what about this is feeling frustrating or upsetting to you.
Because while some of these changes could impact the way somebody gets reviews, for me, the new, I guess, official policies that were rolled out fully in line with the way I shifted coaching to reviews like four or five years ago. So for me, like I don’t have to go in and update my programs, like everything that’s changed as far as the Google side and the Google policy is still fully aligned with what I’ve been coaching to. I think what happened is there’s a lot of people who are using really old dated strategies and Google is finally saying like, “Listen, it’s time to cut it out. You have to be getting legitimate reviews now.” The good news is in a program like Thriving Stylist Method, we teach you how to get tons of reviews without having to incentivize and without making it hard or give out points or give out treatments or whatever.
You shouldn’t have to do any of that kind of stuff. So when I saw the, the changes that rolled out, I was like, to me it’s formalizing what already was. I think what feels heavy is now there’s a, a punishment. Like now we’re being held accountable, now there’s a repercussion. So it’s kind of like the grace period’s over and now it’s time to learn how to build these online review platforms in a legitimized way. I wanna talk about Google and why it’s so important. One of the things I always say is my unfair advantage as a coach is I’ve coached over 17,000 accounts now. So that’s a lot of stylists and salon owners. I’ve gotten a chance to see the back end of a lot of businesses, a lot of revenue totals, P&Ls, sales reports. I’ve gotten to see a lot of things. And in the last several years, when I look at our top producing students, so stylists who are like solo stylists doing $300,000 a year behind the chair on their own.
Salon owners who have 12, 15, 17% profit margins, salon owners who are reporting over 120 new guest requests a month. When we see these salons that are growing really fast, Google is their primary clientele generator. I see it over and over and over again. Instagram is important. I think it’s kind of like the default platform for our industry. If I was to do a big huge survey and say, “Hey, what platform is the industry on? ” I would say 98% of stylists have some kind of Instagram presence. It’s not the same for all of the other platforms. The thing about Instagram is it’s where we go to network with each other. It’s probably the first platform that you put yourself on when you are in beauty school. It’s where we’re comfortable, it’s highly visual, our industry is highly visual. It’s important. When you look at consumer behavior though, seeing those Google reviews is giving you social credibility and that matters in a different capacity than Instagram does.
So it doesn’t mean you can give up on Instagram, but Google counts twice. It’s really, really important. And when we’re looking at how to be effective with Google, you have to be getting fresh reviews every single month. Volume of reviews counts and recency of reviews. So it’s a lot of parts and pieces. So knowing that we have this platform that’s a heavy hitter and then April of 2026, Google comes out and says they’re changing their rules, it makes people nervous because I, I think it’s a critical platform these days. So let’s just debunk like there’s truly nothing to be scared of and I want to talk about why, in my opinion, this is no big deal and we’ve got it. So backstory, these changes came out of Google’s prohibited and restricted content guidelines. They’re publicly shared. You can look them up yourself. They’re on Google’s website.
So few things that came out specifically about Google reviews. One, asking customers to mention a staff member’s name is now against the guidelines. This was one of the things that freaked a lot of salon owners out. We’ll talk about why I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as it’s being cracked up to be, but it’s concerning, right? Let’s say you have a salon with 20 team members and now this reads like a client can’t name them, they just have to give a generic review of the salon. That would be scary. That’s not how the policy reads when I look through it, so we’ll talk about that. Number two, you cannot pressure clients to give reviews on site. So I’ve only had this happen a couple of times where I’ll go to pay for something. You know how we’re paying for everything on kiosks these days?
Like sometimes you tap, but often it’s like you’re looking at a screen like a tiny iPad and you’re clicking all these buttons and stuff like that. Couple times I’ve gone to check out and then a prompt shows up that asks if I would like to leave a rating or review before I go. You can’t do that. So some of these third party apps were collecting reviews on site through a shared kiosk and then we’re filtering them back door into platforms like Yelp or Google or wherever, sometimes a third party app. Google is saying no more of that for Google reviews. So you can still verbally ask a client to leave a review when you’re in your chair, but you want them to be out of the building when they do so. We’ll talk about how Google’s tracking that. Next, incentivizing for reviews with discounts or loyalty points or freebies or anything like that, that is a no-go.
That’s the thing where I’m like, 2021 called, they want their strategy back. We phased out incentivized reviews from our coaching many years back. It hasn’t been included in our program for a long time. Incentivizing for reviews used to be a great strategy and Google and Yelp were totally fine with it because at the beginning they were just trying to make their platforms pop off. Like they just wanted people to engage and get used to using them so they didn’t care how the reviews came and that’s why the quality of reviews back then was wild. Like if you go back in time and look at reviews that some people were leaving for businesses, they were unhinged. It was like the wild, wild west of online reviews. That doesn’t happen anymore. So if you’re still growing reviews, using incentives, contests, raffles, giveaway, prizes, leave me a review, get a free conditioning treatment next time.
Oh, we haven’t been doing those things for a long time. So probably just kind of got left behind in the Google review updates and it’s time to catch up. But that’s when it was like, no big deal. That’s not how we’re getting more reviews, at least in, in my neck of the woods anyway, so it’s okay. There’s a better way to get reviews and we’ll talk about that. Next, and this one was kind of tricky, but we’ll talk about how to navigate. You can’t review gates, meaning you can’t just ask happy clients for reviews. Going to the extremes on that, if a client is visually upset like the worst has happened, I can remember I colored her client’s hair one time. It was the first time she had her hair colored and I felt like I had done an amazing job. She had lighter hair and she wanted to go darker.
And you know how it is. When somebody has lighter hair, you almost have to freak them out about how shocking it’s gonna be when their hair goes darker. And I gave the desired result, but she freaked out and went from, you know, blonde to this beautiful brunette, but it was shocking to her and she was not happy. And I can’t imagine in the depths of her walking out of the salon freaking out, not feeling like herself if I said, “And if you wouldn’t mind leaving me a rating or review when you have a minute.” Like that would be so unnatural. So don’t think of it as you’re supposed to ask every single person for reviews no matter if they’re happy or sad. It’s different than that. So you can’t just ask your happiest, happiest people for reviews is what they’re saying, but we’ll talk about how that’s being monitored and ways to make it work for you.
Next, you can’t do reviews from employees, family or contractors, girl. I feel like that’s, again, old news. Like I don’t know anybody who doesn’t start a Google or a Yelp and the first person they ask for for a review is like their spouse or their mom or their sister or their friend. Like, hello, isn’t that how everybody gets started? And then what happens with those first reviews? They’re all filtered. So that again to me is old news. Like they’re just now saying officially like, “You’re not supposed to do it. ” We know. And you’ve never been supposed to do it, now they’re just openly saying it. And then last, sudden unnatural spikes in review volume. So what’s funny is that’s actually always been a, a rule also. It just was something that was manually checked and now with AI, Google is able to check for that using technology.
So what would happen if you’ve ever like tried to build on Google or Yelp, when you first start, your first few reviews are automatically going to be filtered because Google and Yelp and all these review sites know that when you open up the new platform, of course you’re gonna rally and you’re gonna ask your mom and your cousin and your favorite client to leave your review. They know that you’re doing that. Maybe you are offering incentives, whatever. They know that you’re hustling to get those first few and they know that they’re probably not coming from the most sincere place. Just kind of like, do you remember when you started your Instagram profile and you made your first few posts and they got like one like and it was from your mom, it’s this, literally the same exact thing. And Instagram is not gona post that first post that you made.
They’re not gonna force it out into the algorithm and say like, “Oh, maybe people in their general area would love to see this first post that so- and-so made.” No, then not at all. Not at all. When you’re getting started on any platform, you have to do the heavy lifting. Like the way the Google did it is no different than any other platform. So the way to get reviews to stick with Google is consistency and that’s always been the way. So when they now say they’re looking for unnatural spikes, now they can tell very easily, were you running a review contest or promotion? Were you probably spending the month of May trying to collect more reviews? They’re gonna show if you hadn’t gotten any reviews in the last four months and you get six in May, something happened there. They know that you’re manipulating the system.
So honestly, the key to overcoming a lot of this is consistency. If you’re just consistent and you have good practice around asking for reviews and getting reviews, like 90% of this is already not going to change anything for you. This is for people who were trying Google and dropping Google and trying Google and dropping Google and asking for reviews and not asking for reviews and getting their first 10 and then not doing anything again and not uploading pictures and not responding. For those kind of people who dabbled in it, this is going to be a problem. For those of you using it consistently, not much has changed at all. So openly Google is saying that they are filtering more reviews based on these new rules. So basically this is their heads up. We’re filtering for bad behavior. The behavior highlights haven’t changed that much. The big shift is Google is openly saying, “We’re using AI.
If we know you’re manipulating the system, your reviews are going to be pulled down.” So this is interesting. Google explained review gating as a customer getting a text or an email asking how their experience was. If they respond positively, your auto responder, your email, whatever, sends them a link to leave you a Google review. If they respond negatively, they get routed to a private feedback form. There’s a lot of booking software that does stuff like that, turn that off. If any of you are using something like that, turn it off. I’m not a big fan of asking for reviews by text or by email anyway, so again, it doesn’t feel like a huge shift in practice to me, but if you were in that habit and there was some kind of pre-qualifier question that determined if you were sending a client to a open forum review site, like a Yelp or a Google, or you were asking for private feedback, turn that off because they can scan the internet for that and then you’ll be busted and then you’ll be in trouble.
So you want to turn that off if you have anything like that in place. Okay. So with that, does that mean you’re not supposed to ask for reviews by email or text at all? In thriving stylist method, that’s exactly what that means. We don’t coach to doing that. That being said, Google said if you would like to send a follow-up email or text to customers after they’ve left your location, you can do that. You just have to send that review link to every single person. You can’t have two separate paths to go down. Google also said that you can ask for reviews verbally. You just can’t coach your clients what to say. So that goes back to that name thing. So remember at the beginning I was saying that one of the new rules is that Google says you cannot have staf mentioned by name.
What they’re looking for, and if you read the policy in full, you’ll see it over and over and over again. They’re looking for unnatural patterns. So what was happening is, for example, we recently had somebody out to clean our carpets in our home and they did a great job and the carpet cleaner was leaving and said, “If you receive five star service today, please go to such and such review site and mention that my name did an excellent job cleaning your carpets. You cannot do that. That you cannot do for a multitude of reasons. That’s the kind of staff member mentioned by name that they don’t want you to do and also it’s you telling the client what to do. So you can’t tell the client, leave me a five-star rating or review, make sure that you mention me by name. You can’t do any of that kind of stuff.
So the verbiage and thrivers is so good, but you can’t create like a template of what you want the review to look like for your clients and you can’t say, Make sure that you mention Janet did your hair today, that kind of stuff you can’t do. Google openly said it’s looking for patterns. So if one review a client says, happened to go in to see the salon today, I saw Janet. She did an amazing haircut. I’m so glad I found her. I didn’t book specifically with her, but the reception team put me with her. It was amazing. So glad I tried them out. That will likely stick. If the next review is, I saw Janet, she’s amazing at doing color, was referred to her by a friend, so glad that I went in to see Janet. That might stick. If the next review says Janet at Civa Salon is a 10 out of 10, let’s say that that salon hadn’t been getting a lot of reviews, but for whatever reason, Janet is in the mood to push the program and three reviews back to back are mentioning Janet.
Meanwhile, Janet hadn’t gotten any reviews in the last six months, likely some of those are gonna be pulled. So again, goes back to consistency. If everybody on your team is consistently asking for reviews, some are gonna mention them by name, some are not, and you’re gonna get reviews all across the board. Consistency counts and then you’re gona have no problem. Next, they said that using a QR code that links directly to your Google review page placed in your physical location is still totally okay. The suggestion is though that the client scans that QR code on their phone but does not leave the review until they’ve left your premises. So from their car, you know, at the coffee shop, down the street, whatever, that’s the suggestion that Google is making. They are looking for volume of reviews left from your IP address. So does everybody know that anybody who uses the internet has an IP address?
It’s kind of like a digital fingerprint. And so companies like Google or people who pay for data like this know where you are logging into a computer from using your cell phone from leaving a Google review from. And if Google is able to see that, wow, 90% of your Google reviews are coming through when the client is still on site, you’re gonna have a lot of filtering happen. So you want clients to be leaving reviews, not in your building. Google wants to make sure you’re not lurking over their shoulder, watching them make a review and then knocking $20 off their haircut while they’re in the building. So make sure that they’ve moved on. The other thing that Google openly said is you should be responding to all reviews, positive and negative. Again, like seriously, 2019 called. Like, yes, we should have always been doing that all along, so they’re just tripling down on it now.
So some of the riskier behaviors that a salon or stylist could engage in that would trigger some of these reviews to be pulled down is offering incentives using one of those shared kiosk checkout systems that prompts for reviews, having a set script that gets shared every single time clients are in and specifically saying, “Make sure that you mention Janet did your hair. Don’t say anything like that. If they leave your name, great. If they don’t leave your name, fine. You can’t get so hung up on that. Reviews coming in in large volume in a short window. Again, consistency matters. Any unnatural spikes or unnatural behavior will cause reviews to be filtered. Okay, so what’s the repercussion? Filtering is the biggest repercussion, which is annoying. Like if you have 100 Google reviews but 70 are filtered, that sucks. Like you really only have 30 reviews then because that’s what clients are able to see.
So they’re just trying to keep you honest. If you are getting fraudulent reviews, they’re going to disappear and that’s going to work against you in growing business. If you have repeated violations or it looks like you’re trying to hack the system, you’ll simply lose your business profile. We’ve seen this happen on Instagram. How many times have you seen somebody in the Instagram community say, “I lost my entire profile. I’m starting to build again from scratch. Instagram took my account down. They’re, they’re giving me no reason why. People have lost their Facebook pages for the same reason or gotten locked out of their Facebook pages for the same reason. Going back to what I said in the beginning, it stinks that Google’s doing this, but every social media platform uses an algorithm. Every social media platform filters things. Every social media platform limits your reach and Google is basically just now formalizing and being very blunt about the behavior that you should not be contributing to in 2026 trying to grow on Google.
I hope this has been clarifying. In full disclosure, none of this to me feels very egregious. Getting consistent with asking for reviews is certainly a skillset, but man, once you have it dialed in and you start to gain momentum with your strategies around getting reviews and promoting reviews, it’s like seamless. It’s, it’s one of those things that’s like building muscle. It’s like starting a workout routine, you’re trying to cook for yourself at home. Once you get into the routine and the ritual and the habit, it comes really easily and I think you’ll all adapt to this just fine. If you have any additional questions, you can leave me a rating or review on iTunes. I pull all of my featured podcast episodes from there, and as I always say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
