Who gets paid when someone books from your Google listing

Short answer: yes, it can still take its cut, and the tap that costs you most is the one from somebody who already knew your name.

The Book button on a Google listing is not one thing. It is either a link you put there yourself, or a link a booking provider put there, and those two are charged completely differently. If it is a provider’s button, the tap sends your client to the provider’s page, and a booking finished on that page is a booking the provider can charge you for. Your listing is still free. The button sitting on it is a separate question, and most owners have never been asked it.

What the Book button actually is

Google’s help page on local business links says a profile can carry up to ten links per category, including “Book an appointment”, and that you add them yourself under Booking. It also says links to certain services “can automatically appear” on your profile on Search and Maps, “provided and updated by third-party partners or through automated data from Google”, and that where a provider is involved those links “lead to the website of the provider”.

Then, on the page about setting bookings up through a provider, Google says it outright: “When you book through Google, your provider might charge you. Check with your provider for more info.”

That is Google, on its own help page, telling you the free thing has a paid thing attached. It does not say how much, because that is not Google’s to say.

What Treatwell’s own pages say

Treatwell’s partner help centre, on Reserve with Google: “If the customer completes the booking from your Treatwell page, the same conditions and fees will apply as per a normal booking made from the Marketplace.” It adds that loyal customers who book this way are identified automatically by the system, and tells partners to keep their customer list up to date so it recognises them.

So the tap on Google does not change the fee. It changes where the booking is finished, and the booking is priced by where it is finished.

The rest is on their pricing page: 35% commission on first bookings made by new clients brought from the marketplace, 0% on repeat bookings, a 2.5% processing fee if a client pays online in advance, and “all commissions and fees are subject to VAT”. The same page lists what is not charged: bookings made directly with you, including calls, texts, WhatsApps and any clients you add yourself, and the Book Now button on your social media and your website.

Read that list again. Your website is on it. Your social media is on it. Your Google listing is not, and the help centre paragraph above is why.

On a £120 first colour that works out at £42 commission, and with VAT at the standard 20% on top of it, £50.40. You keep £69.60. If she paid online in advance, the 2.5% fee takes another £3.60 and you keep £66. Same client, same chair, same hour: £120 if she rang you, £69.60 if she tapped a button that happened to be sitting on your listing.

One caveat worth reading yourself: the plan panels on that page say the new client commission applies to clients introduced via the marketplace “subject to location”, so your own agreement is the thing that binds you.

The bit that decides it is your client list

Not where she searched. Not what she typed. The question the system asks is whether the marketplace already has her as your client when she books.

If it does, that is a repeat booking and the rate on it is nothing. If it does not, the booking finished on that page is her first one there, whatever your own diary says. A woman who has been coming to you for two years and has always rung up is, to a marketplace that has never had her name, a stranger.

That is what Treatwell’s instruction to keep your customer list up to date is really about. The check is a list. The list is only as good as what somebody typed into it. An afternoon spent getting your regulars onto it properly is the most valuable admin in this article, and nobody is going to do it for you.

Now it is on the paid side of Google too

If you run ads as well, the same button turns up on the ad. Google’s page on local ads says they serve on Performance Max and Search, that eligible local ads on Search “feature native ‘Book’ and ‘Schedule’ buttons directly on the ad”, and that selecting one “sends the user straight to your booking partner landing page”.

What that costs, from the same page: for Search and Performance Max campaigns you may be charged a standard cost per click for clicks on any of the action buttons, and it names ‘Call’, ‘Directions’, ‘Website’ and ‘Book’. You are charged for one click type only, even if she taps more than one of them.

So the click can be yours to pay for and the booking someone else’s to charge for. I am not going to tell you which provider fills that button on an ad, because Google’s page does not say and it is not a thing to guess at with money involved. What the page does say is enough to go and check your own account with.

What to do about it, in order

Look at it first. Search your own salon name on your phone, as a client would, and tap Book. Whose page did you land on? It takes ten seconds and almost nobody has done it.

Then decide whether you want it. It is not automatically wrong. If the marketplace genuinely brings you people who were never going to find you, a one-off fee on a first booking is a marketing cost like any other, and nothing on the bookings after it is a fair deal. The one that stings is the woman who typed your salon’s name into Google and arrived through a button you did not know was there.

Whatever you decide, get your regulars onto the client list.

If you want the provider’s button gone, Google’s own steps are: on Search, select Booking, then Remove Provider. On Maps, select Edit profile, then Booking, then Remove Provider.

Then put your own link in its place. Under Booking, choose Add link and paste the address you want the bookings to go to, whether that is your own site, your diary software or the page carrying your phone number.

If your listing is a mess in other ways, that is a bigger job than this one and we have written it up separately: why your salon does not show up on Google Maps, and whether you can have a listing at all when you rent a chair.

Where we come into it

We fix the Google listing first, before anything is paid for, and where the Book button points is part of that. After that it is ads: one campaign split by service, a landing page on our own domain, and £15 to £149 a month depending on your ad spend band. No commission on bookings, ever.

One thing we will not claim, because nobody honestly can: we cannot tell you which client came from which search. The marketplaces do not share booking data and neither does Google. We count calls, enquiries and booking click-outs, and we say so.

Fees, wording and menu steps above were read off Treatwell’s and Google’s own pages on 24 September 2026. Both change them without telling anybody, so check yours before you act on anything with money attached to it.