In July we analysed 309 hair salons and barbershops in Barcelona, one by one, barrio (neighbourhood) by barrio. We wanted to know one very specific thing: how many really have a website of their own — and, the other way round, how many are Barcelona hair salons without a website.

The answer: 39% have one. Six out of ten salons in this city don't have a website that's theirs.

It isn't an estimate or a survey. It's a count. And what we found along the way made us change how we talk about this problem.

How we measured it

We ran 36 searches at barrio level — not city level — and collected the businesses that came up: Gràcia, Sant Antoni, El Clot, Sants, Poblenou, l'Eixample and the rest. For each one we looked at what sat behind the name: the Google listing, the website link, where that link went and what was on the other side.

We counted as a website of their own a site on the business's own domain, with several pages, that the owner controls. An Instagram profile doesn't count. A booking page hosted on someone else's platform doesn't count. A directory listing doesn't count.

It's a distinction that sounds pedantic and isn't at all, as you'll see shortly.

Two honest caveats: the sample is Barcelona city, so don't extrapolate it to the whole of Spain; and it's a snapshot from the end of July 2026, not a permanent truth. That said, 309 real businesses say a great deal more than any hunch.

The four groups

This is what came out:


No website of any kind	35%
Social media only	15%
Booking platform only (Booksy, Treatwell…)	12%
Website of their own	39%

Adding up the first three: 61% without a real website of their own.

The figure fits what you see at national level. According to data from the INE's ICT survey (Spain's national statistics office), compiled by the ONTSI (the government's telecoms and information society observatory), around 68% of Spanish companies with fewer than 10 employees have no corporate website. Barcelona's hair salons are doing a little better than the average Spanish micro-business, but not by much.

The interesting part isn't the total. It's the two groups in the middle.

The 15% who think Instagram is their website

A well-kept Instagram profile gives a very convincing sense of presence. It has photos, recent activity, people writing in. It looks like being online.

But when someone searches "hair salon in Sant Antoni" on Google, that profile carries little weight. Google doesn't read it as a business with services, opening hours and a location; it reads it as a social profile. And the person searching at ten o'clock on a Saturday night doesn't want to see your feed: they want to know whether you're open on Monday, how much a colour costs and how to book.

On top of that there's something almost nobody considers: that profile isn't yours. Someone else sets the rules, someone else decides your reach, and if tomorrow the account gets blocked by an automated mistake — it happens more than you'd think — it disappears with you inside it.

The 12% who pay to exist in someone else's house

This was the group that surprised us most, and the most revealing one.

These are salons that already pay for software. They have online booking, reminders, a profile with photos and prices. They're genuinely digital. What they don't have is anything of their own: all that presence lives inside Booksy or Treatwell.

And that rent isn't cheap. Treatwell charges 25% for every new client won through its marketplace; Booksy Boost takes 30% of the new client's first visit, on top of the monthly fee. They're useful platforms — we're not going to pretend otherwise — but the model is clear: they bring you clients in exchange for a percentage, and those clients are recorded on their platform, not in your house.

If you're in this group, you've already shown you're willing to pay for technology that works. You just don't have anything in your own name yet.

And now the uncomfortable finding: the ones that do have a website don't have a bad one

We expected to find a disaster. We didn't.

We scored each site's visibility out of 100. The websites in the group that wins on the Google map scored a median of 64. Those in the long tail — the salons that don't make the top — scored 71. Yes, you read that right: the ones that don't show up had slightly better websites than the ones that do.

That breaks the industry's usual script. "Your website is out of date, it needs rebuilding" is what an agency sells, and according to these numbers it's often false.

What we did find in that 39% are very specific, very repeated gaps: 63% have no structured business data (the technical record Google and AI assistants read to understand who you are), 58% show no visible opening hours, and 54% are, in practice, a single page.

They aren't bad websites. They're websites that were made once and that nobody has touched since.

Why this matters more this year than last

For a long time, not having a website could be made up for with a good Google listing and word of mouth in the barrio. It worked reasonably well.

What has changed is who does the answering. More and more people don't look for a list of ten links: they ask an assistant and get two or three names. And an assistant needs something to quote. If you don't have a site of your own, you're not a source — at most you're a mention on someone else's page, and that page is usually a platform that also lists your competitors.

61% of the salons in this city are in that position right now. Most don't know it, because nobody has ever shown them what a new customer sees when they search for them.

What a website won't fix

Let's be clear, because this industry promises far too much.

A website won't fill your diary on its own. It doesn't replace a good cut or good service. It won't make people from Gràcia cross the city to see you. And it doesn't deliver results the week it goes live: visibility is built over months, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you smoke.

What it does is more modest and more important: when someone is already looking for you — because they've heard about you, because they've walked past, because they're looking for something you do — they find you, understand what you offer and know how to reach you. And that it's still true a year from now.

FAQ

My Google listing is properly set up. Isn't that enough?

It's the foundation and it's essential, but it's a profile inside a Google product, not a site of your own. It falls short for explaining services, prices or who you're for, and it isn't what search engines or assistants use as a source when they have to justify a recommendation.

I use Booksy or Treatwell and it works for me. Why would I want a website?

Keep using them if they bring you clients. The question is one of ownership: every new client who comes in that way costs you a commission and is recorded in their system. Having something of your own doesn't force you to leave the platform — it gives you a channel where the commission is zero.

I made my website years ago and haven't touched it since. Is it better than nothing?

Almost always, yes, and it's probably in better shape than you think: the data says existing websites score well. The problem usually isn't the design, but what's missing — opening hours, structured information, more than one page — and the fact that nobody checks it.

Why do you measure by barrio and not by city?

Because nobody searches "hair salon in Barcelona". They search in their barrio, or simply "near me". Measuring at city level gives you a nice, false number; at barrio level it gives you the number that affects your diary.

If you work in a salon and don't know which of the four groups you're in, you can check in a minute.

At wiweb we build your page from what already exists about your business on Google — name, address, opening hours, photos, reviews — we host it and we write its legal texts. Publishing it is free, with no card: create it in two minutes.

And if you'd also like us to check how you show up — your position on the map, whether AI mentions you and who in your barrio appears ahead of you — that's Grow (€9/month, every month) or Pro (€24/month, every week, with whatever's wrong fixed automatically): pricing.

Barcelona hair salons without a website: 61% have none of their own. We counted them one by one.