How AI assistants recommend hair salons
Someone who asks an AI assistant for a hair salon gets a few names, and a different few from the next assistant. Here is what they answered in every city the AIGROW Index asked, and what a salon can work on.
- Cities asked
- 88
- Names in the rankings
- 1,177
- Businesses named per city
- 41
- Names repeated on a rerun
- 42%
- Answers that name the leader
- 38%
The first two rows are counts; the rows under them are medians over the ranked pages. Every question was asked without a location or a chat history.
Asked for a hair salon in 88 cities, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini named about 41 salons per city, and 61% of those names came up only once. Each assistant builds its list from what is published about a salon. What a salon controls is that public record: its services, its specialities and its listings.
What a customer asked, and who came first
One place of the 88, as an example: New York. Every place was asked the same questions in its own language, and its page in the Index has the full ranking.
- What is the best hair salon in New York?
- I need a good cut and color in New York. Which salon would you recommend?
- Which hair salon in New York is good with curly hair?
- Which hairdresser in New York would you recommend for a wedding updo?
- Fox & Janenamed in 56% of the answers
- Sally Hershberger NoMadnamed in 47% of the answers
- Spoke & Wealnamed in 31% of the answers
The names that recur
78 different businesses came first across 88 rankings, and 57 names were listed in three places or more. These are the most frequent.
- Jean Louis David18 places
- CURLS & CO10 places
- L'Atelier de la Coiffure8 places
- TONI&GUY8 places
- Compagnia della Bellezza7 places
- Llongueras7 places
Counted by spelling: two businesses with the same name in different places count as one.
What an owner can work on
No one can promise a place in an assistant’s answer. What an owner controls is what is published about the business, and these are the parts the questions above point to.
Name your specialities
The questions ask for cut and colour, for curly hair and for a wedding updo. If you do these well, say so by name on your site and your profile, with photos of the work.
Prices on the page
A price list on your site, not only inside a booking app, tells an assistant what you offer and for whom.
Reviews that describe the work
A review that says “great with curly hair” describes your salon in the words a client would ask with. Ask for reviews after the appointment, and answer each one.
Every ranking for this trade
The AIGROW Index publishes the ranking of each place with every answer, and how it was measured.
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