Spa Marketing Lab

Massage therapists and spas on Google: the 2026 benchmark report

By Steve Meitler · Data refreshed 2026-09-07 · 70,932 listings · 51 states

Review counts, ratings, website presence and hours for 70,932 massage and spa listings, computed from public Google Business Profile data across 51 states.

70,932
massage therapists and spas in our Google Business Profile dataset
22
median review count
21.3%
have no website listed
33.8%
have fewer than 10 reviews
32 vs 4
median reviews with a website vs without
85.9%
rated 4.5 stars or higher

Reviews

Review countValue
Median22
Average (mean)78
25th percentile5
75th percentile76
90th percentile201

Share of massage therapists and spas by review count:

BucketShare of listings
0 reviews11.4%
Under 1033.8%
Under 2552.2%
100 or more20.3%
500 or more2.5%

Ratings

MetricValue
Average rating4.76
Rated 5.050.3%
Rated 4.5 or higher85.9%
Rated under 4.05.1%
No rating yet8.1%

Websites

Website statusShare
Website listed78.7%
No website listed21.3%
Own domain75.2%
Social profile only1.3%
Free or DIY builder2.2%

Median review count for massage therapists and spas with a website: 32. Without one: 4.

Profile completeness and hours

Profile fieldShare
Has a profile photo98.1%
Public email on profile23.3%
Open 24 hours3.8%
Open Saturday59.9%
Open Sunday39.3%
No hours listed13.9%

Where the listings are

StateListings
CA2,507
WA2,464
NY2,458
PA2,272
TX2,257
OH2,237
MI2,185
IL2,136
MN2,129
CO2,100
MA2,088
VA2,070

Primary categories

Google categoryListings
Massage therapist32,458
Massage spa10,258
Chiropractor4,468
Spa3,534
Day spa1,969
Wellness center1,909
Physical therapy clinic1,885
Medical spa1,378

Read the median first, then ignore it

Half of all massage and spa listings on Google have 22 reviews or fewer. If you have 40, you are already in the better half of 70,932 businesses nationwide. That is a poor reason to relax. Google shows three businesses in the local pack, and in any suburb with a franchise studio and two independents the winners sit in the top tenth, which starts at 201 reviews.

The spread is wider in this trade than in most. The 25th percentile is 5 reviews and the 75th is 76, so the gap between a quiet solo practice and an established spa is enormous, and the mean of 78 is dragged upward by a small number of multi-room spas and chain locations with several hundred each. 2.5% have cleared 500. Compare yourself to the percentiles, never to the mean.

At the bottom, 11.4% of listings have no reviews at all and 52.2% have fewer than 25. A meaningful share of those are licensed therapists who rent a room, do good work, and have never once asked a client to write anything down. That is the least expensive competitive advantage available in this industry, and most of the field is leaving it on the table.

Ratings will not separate you

The average rating is 4.8 stars, 50.3% of rated listings sit at a perfect 5.0, and 85.9% are at 4.5 or above. A high rating in massage is table stakes, partly because clients who dislike a session usually just do not rebook rather than write a review. Only 5.1% are below 4.0, and 8.1% carry no rating at all.

The practical read: your star average is not a differentiator, your review count and recency are. A spa at 4.7 with 180 reviews outranks and outsells a spa at 5.0 with 11, both in Google's ordering and in the mind of somebody comparing two tabs.

The website gap

21.3% of massage and spa listings link no website. Those that do link one show a median of 32 reviews; those that do not show 4. That is the widest single split anywhere in this dataset.

We are not claiming a website generates reviews. Owners who treat the practice as a business tend to do both. But the missing link is the clearest marker of a competitor who will not fight you for the map pack, and if it is your listing, it is a week of work and the highest-leverage week you will spend this year. The website is also where a booking link lives, and a booking link is what converts a 10 p.m. decision into a Tuesday appointment.

Hours are where independents lose

59.9% of listings show Saturday hours, but only 39.3% show Sunday, and 13.9% list no hours whatsoever. Google renders a red "Closed" on a profile whose hours say so and shows nothing useful on a profile with none. Franchise studios almost all post seven-day hours. Adding a Sunday block, even four hours by appointment, puts you in a group that most of the field is not in.

Photos are close to universal, at 98.1%, so having none puts you in the bottom couple of percent instantly. Public email is rarer, at 23.3%, and 3.8% claim 24-hour availability, which for this category usually signals a listing that needs cleaning up.

What to do with this

  1. Pull your own numbers. Open your Google Business Profile and write down review count, star average, whether a website is linked, and whether Saturday and Sunday hours are set.
  2. Place yourself honestly. Below 22 reviews is the bottom half. Below 76 is the bottom three quarters. 201 and above is map-pack territory.
  3. If you are in the 21.3% with no site, fix that before anything else, and put an online booking link on every page. See the website guide.
  4. Set a review pace and hold it. One ask per working day at the front desk moves a 20-review studio past the 75th percentile inside a year. Scripts are in the reviews guide.
  5. Post real hours including at least one weekend block, and turn on missed-call text-back so the calls you cannot take while on a table still convert. Run your own figures through the calculator.
  6. Only then buy traffic. Ads pointed at a profile with 6 reviews, no photos and no booking link pay for your competitor's research.

Method

This report aggregates 70,932 public Google Business Profile listings collected from Google Maps searches for massage therapists and spas across every US state, deduplicated by place. Review counts and ratings are as displayed on the listing at collection time. "Website listed" means the profile links to any URL; we classify the URL as an owned domain, a social profile, or a free site builder by hostname. Figures are refreshed monthly. Cite this page as: Spa Marketing Lab, "Massage therapists and spas on Google benchmark report", 2026.

SM
Steve Meitler, Editor
Steve has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, massage therapists and spas among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About this site

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