How we rank salons

This page describes the main parameters we use to order salon lists on the city pages, and their relative importance. It applies identically to every listed salon, whether or not it uses Primer.

The first parameter, the one that decides the group: how many of a reader's questions the row can answer — published opening hours, a price, verified reviews, online booking, a page of its own. Every one of them is a fact the row shows on the screen and one any listed salon can come to publish; no row rises because it pays for anything. A row that publishes nothing beyond a name, an address and a phone appears, alphabetically, in the compact block at the end of the list. We also state the uncomfortable half of this parameter: "online booking" exists only for salons running on Primer, and verified reviews only for those collecting them through Primer — no position is for sale, but a salon using Primer publishes, by construction, more of the facts above.

The second parameter, which orders rows that publish the same amount: the lower bound of the 95% Wilson score interval computed over the salon's review figure — its review average and the number of reviews that figure is built from. Not every row publishes that figure: for salons using Primer it is exactly the average printed on their row, while an unclaimed row publishes no rating and is not scored on one. The review figures other platforms publish about that salon are figures we do not print on the row and no longer use to order either — we never put a rating in the name of a salon that did not give it to us, and we do not rank a list on somebody else's work. Any salon that claims its row can publish reviews through Primer and enters the ranking on the same formula. Having no reviews does not send it to the compact block at the end of the list, though: only rows that publish nothing beyond a name, an address and a phone land there, and a row with published opening hours stays in the main list with no reviews at all.

Where the reviews we score come from: the published reviews left through Primer after completed appointments with that salon. From the public sources we take facts only — name, address, phone, opening hours, category — plus the source and the date we read it, which we keep in the row's data and disclose on request; we import and display no descriptions, no review quotes and no ratings published by other platforms. The formula, the rating scale and the tie-breaks are identical for both kinds of salon: no row is scored on a figure it does not publish here.

How a Primer salon's average is actually computed, because it is not the plain average of the ratings received: every review is weighted by the door it came through and by how recent it is. A signed link tied to a single booking weighs the most; a review left through a weaker door weighs less; an old review weighs less than a fresh one, but never below a fixed floor, so a salon that has been good for years is not erased by its own age. A review with no recorded door and no text does not count at all — neither in the average nor in the review count we score. The rule carries a published version, "display-v1", and the number of reviews excluded that way is printed next to the salon's figure in the structured data of its reviews page, for as long as the salon publishes that page: we neither weight nor exclude silently. For salons that do not use Primer none of this applies: we take the average and the count published by the source, as they stand.

Why Wilson and not a plain average: a salon with 5.0 from 2 reviews does not carry the evidence of a salon with 4.9 from 800. A plain average puts the 2-review salon first; the Wilson lower bound asks "how good could the most plausible worst case be, at this volume of evidence" and puts it second. This is a product decision, declared as such, not a measurement of actual service quality.

Tie-breaks, in order: higher review count, then alphabetical order of the name, then the internal identifier. Nothing else enters the comparison.

Salons that publish nothing beyond a name, an address and a phone have nothing to be ordered by. They appear in a separate, labelled block at the end of the list, in alphabetical order. The rule is the same for every salon, and a row leaves the block the day it publishes its opening hours or a price, or claims its page.

The consequence, stated plainly: since 4 September 2026 we no longer use — not even to order — the review figures other platforms publish about unclaimed salons. The effect is that an unclaimed row cannot be scored on reviews; it does rise, however, when the public source gives it opening hours — and it then appears in the main list beside the other rows that publish a week, in alphabetical order. We did not do this to favour anyone — we sell no positions, directly or indirectly — but because a rating somebody else collected, about a salon that did not give it to us, is not ours to use.

What does NOT influence the order: how much the salon pays, which plan it is on, whether it runs an offer, or whether it has contacted us. We do not sell list positions, we accept no payment — direct or indirect — for position, and no position is reserved. The order follows only what the row publishes, and the formula is identical for every row.

Salons publishing their data through Primer additionally show price, duration, full opening hours and the earliest free slot — because we hold that data live. Client status is not itself a parameter: the comparison does not read whether a salon uses Primer. It reads the facts published on the row, and those are exactly what the first parameter counts — so a row that publishes more of them rises, whoever it belongs to, and a row that publishes them on its own rises the same way. It removes nothing from anybody else's row, and no position is for sale.

Corrections and objections: under the list on every city page there are three links — "Claim your salon", "Report an error" and "Remove my listing" — which open the same request form, already on the cell and the page you were reading; you pick the row it is about there, and we answer within one month, for a correction as for an objection. The three links appear on every page that carries at least one unclaimed row, whether the names on those rows are companies or sole traders. The names of the salons that do not use Primer are reconstructed from the source listing and may be imprecise or abbreviated — that is exactly what the second link corrects.

The balancing test (LIA) for the profiles generated automatically from public sources, as art. 6(1)(f) GDPR requires. We publish it here because this is where the on-page notice sends the reader.

The legitimate interest we pursue: that every city has a public, checkable list of the salons trading in it, built from facts anyone can verify at the source — in the interest of the public looking for a salon and of the salons that want to be found. Necessity: the list could not exist without the businesses' identifying data, and consent could not be obtained from thousands of traders before listing them; we publish only the minimum that makes the list useful — name, address, phone, opening hours, category —, we name the sources at the foot of every page, and we keep the date we read a row in that row's data. We publish no descriptions, no photographs of other people's businesses, no ratings taken from other platforms, and nothing beyond those facts.

Balancing against the data subject's rights: for a sole trader (PFA, întreprindere individuală or familială) the firm name IS that person's own name (Legea 26/1990 art. 31), so publishing it touches personal data. The assessment rests on the data already being public by law, in registers anyone may consult, and on its being professional rather than private: a trader entered in the company register reasonably expects their name, registered office and line of business to be publicly visible. The safeguards that tip the balance: we process no special categories of data, we build no profiles of individuals, we print no rating or opinion on an unclaimed row, we name the sources on every page and keep the reading date in the row's data, and the right to object is unconditional and honoured within one month, with no reason required. On an objection the row is withdrawn, and a later re-import does not bring it back.