In 2024, one Google review in eight for The Piercing Shop Hamilton was a low one. In 2025 it was one in 23, and almost every review that year got a reply from the shop. Something changed, and the 87 reviews of the last 12 months average 4.82. Google still shows 4.6, because the profile carries 499 reviews going back to 2013, when the shop in Garden Place was called Keen on Piercing. We read all of them, priced the most common piercings from the studio’s own list, and checked what people see when they search for the shop. It’s a break from tattoo studios in our series of Hamilton business reviews, after Good Honest Tattoos and Skinks.
Quick answers
- The Piercing Shop is at 6 Garden Place, Hamilton Central. It is open 7 days, walk-in only (except genital piercings), and has had the same owner, Sue, since 2000.
- Google: 4.6 from 499 reviews, the most of any piercing business in Hamilton by far. The last 12 months: 87 reviews, average 4.82, 85 replies.
- Prices are published: earlobes with the gun $15 to $25 including jewellery, a nose stud with the gun $35, needle piercings $30 plus jewellery from $10, and $20 needle piercings every Sunday.
- Shona, Caleb and Max are the names that come up most. The 44 low reviews are mostly about attitude at the counter (15) and placement (14).
- SEO4 Audit Score: 15 out of 30. Marketing 8, reviews 5, search 2. The Call button on the website has the number in the wrong format.
Contents
What 499 reviews say
Of the 499 reviews, 434 give five stars and 399 have text. That makes it one of the largest review collections we have read for a single Hamilton shop. The words that come up most are friendly, lovely and welcoming (185 reviews), followed by clean and professional (113).
Then come nerves. Eighty reviews describe being scared, anxious or “so nervous” and being talked through it. Fifty-six are about children: babies, three-year-olds and six-year-olds getting their first earrings, and parents surprised that it went so smoothly. The website calls lobe piercing for babies and under-fives a speciality, and the reviews back that up.
Price shows up in 43 reviews, usually as good value, and often tied to the $20 Sunday special. One January 2026 reviewer expected the wait, “totally expected on a Sunday”, and said it was worth it.
The chart tells the story of the last three years. Reviews grew from 35 in 2022 to 117 in 2025. The yearly average dropped to 4.46 in 2024, the year with 11 low reviews, then climbed to 4.83 in 2025 and 4.81 so far in 2026. Replies started in 2023 and are now close to universal: 110 of 117 in 2025 and 60 of 62 in 2026. Many are short (“Thanks Tyler ♥️”), but the replies to longer reviews pick up details and offer a free check-up and clean.
The piercers people name
More than a third of the written reviews (139 of 399) name someone. Shona leads with 58, then Caleb with 39 and Max with 20. Twenty of Shona’s 58 reviews are from people who were nervous and came out calm. Caleb’s reviews come more often from regulars and people who wanted things explained; one credits him with fixing a nose stud that had been placed badly, and in a reply the shop says he has been piercing for more than ten years. Max’s reviews are short and warm, and one customer came in because of a Facebook review about Max. Sue, the owner, signs some of the replies.
The website names only Sue. A customer who has read about Shona or Caleb can’t find them on the site, can’t see when they work, and has no idea who the trainee piercer on a $15 day is. A short team section with photos and specialities would turn 139 reviews into a reason to visit.
Twenty dollars, every Sunday
The Sunday special has been $20 for 25 years. Few prices in New Zealand have held that long.
Prices
The Piercing Shop puts its prices on the home page, which most piercing studios in town don’t. On 29 October 2026 the website listed:
| Piercing | Price |
|---|---|
| Earlobe with the gun (System 75) | $15 to $25 each, including jewellery; $30 to $50 a pair |
| Nose with the gun (System 75) | $35, including the titanium stud |
| Needle piercing (ear, cartilage, nose, septum, eyebrow, lip, tongue, navel, nipples) | $30 plus jewellery |
| Jewellery | From $10 |
| Sunday special | Any standard needle piercing $20, plus jewellery |
| Fitting | Free for jewellery bought there; $5 for your own |
| Consultation | Free, with an anatomy check |
| Genital piercings | R18, by appointment only |
| Age | Under 16 with a parent or guardian to sign; 16 and over with valid ID |
The Facebook page adds occasional deals: $15 needle piercings on trainee days and “buy 2, get the 3rd free” in September 2025. Google suggests “the piercing shop hamilton afterpay”, but the website doesn’t say whether Afterpay is accepted.
Piercing price check
Piercing price check
The Piercing Shop publishes its prices. Choose the piercing, how many, and the day you plan to go, and see what you’ll pay before you walk in.
Prices from thepiercingshop.co.nz, viewed 29 October 2026: earlobe gun piercing $15 to $25 each including jewellery ($30 to $50 a pair); nose gun piercing $35 including the stud; needle piercing $30 plus jewellery from $10; needle piercings $20 on Sundays, plus jewellery; jewellery bought there is fitted free, your own for $5. The calculator doesn’t include trainee-day or sale prices. A guide, not a quote.
How the calculator works
Gun piercings use the published per-piercing price, which already includes the jewellery; for earlobes we show the full $15 to $25 range. Needle piercings are $30 each, or $20 on Sundays, plus the jewellery price you enter for each piercing (the cheapest is $10). Trainee-day and sale prices aren’t included because they change.
The low reviews
Forty-four reviews give one to three stars, 8.8% of the total. Seven are stars only. Two complaints make up most of the 37 with text.
Fifteen are about how people were treated. Customers describe staff as short, rude or distracted at the counter, someone talking over them, a walk-in served out of turn, and one nervous first-timer told it was “a you problem”. Several say the shop is usually great, which suggests a few bad days or one or two people, not a pattern for everyone.
Fourteen are about the piercing itself: placed too high, too deep or at an angle, crooked septum or tongue piercings, an industrial on an ear that wasn’t suited to it. A few mention bars that were too short or broken jewellery. In two of these reviews the shop fixed the problem when the customer came back, and one of them praises Caleb for it.
The replies have improved too. Before 2023 there were none. Since 2025, every low review with text has had a reply, usually an apology and an email address for details. One older reply, from 2024, told the reviewer the one star wasn’t justified, which rarely helps. The best ones are short, own the problem and invite the customer back for a free check.
A bit higher
Piercers and SEO consultants hear the same request: “Can you move it just a little higher?” Only one of them can do it in five minutes.
Hamilton’s piercing map
Search “piercing hamilton nz” on a phone and Google shows three places: The Piercing Shop Hamilton, Zippys Mobile Body Piercing and Lovisa at The Base. Google’s Places list shows only two dedicated piercing businesses in Hamilton. Other competition comes from tattoo studios with a piercer, jewellery chains and salons listed on Fresha, where ear piercing starts around $25.
On reviews nobody is close. The Piercing Shop has 499 against 36 for Zippys and 28 for Lovisa, and it got 87 new ones last year while the other two got seven between them. Zippys has the higher average, 4.89 from 36, which is the kind of number that can win clicks in the map. The Piercing Shop’s strongest answer is the 4.82 of its last year.
SEO audit
This part is mainly for the studio and other piercing and beauty businesses. If you just want to get pierced, skip to the common questions.
What people see when they search the name
Google suggests “the piercing shop hamilton prices”, “reviews”, “photos”, “hours” and “afterpay”. Searching the name gives the Google profile with a Call button and the right phone number. Below it, on 29 October 2026, the results were Fresha, Wheree, Facebook videos from the shop, an Instagram post, MapQuest under the old name and a ten-year-old Reddit thread linking to keenonpiercing.com. The studio’s own website wasn’t on the first page. Google has only one page of it in its index, the home page.
People still search the old name too: “keen on piercing hamilton”, “keen on piercing prices” and “keen on piercing sunday prices”. Google sends those searches to the right profile, but MapQuest and White Pages still list Keen on Piercing at 6 Garden Place. The Keen on Piercing name and website now belong to other stores, in Auckland and Tauranga. The website tells the whole story, from Trendez to Keen on Piercing to The Piercing Shop, but only far down the page.
The Google profile
This is the strongest part. The name, category, phone, hours and website are right; there are owner photos and videos, a list of services and a short description. Most reviews now get a reply. What it could add: posts with the Sunday special and trainee days, which already go out on Facebook, and photos of the team.
The website
thepiercingshop.co.nz is modern and dark, built with LatinoTech Design’s website builder. It has the full price list, aftercare advice with healing times, an age and consent policy, a portfolio of 17 photos and Sue’s story. For search and for phones, the problems are these:
- The Call Studio button links to “+078399100”. The international form should start +64 7, so phones may not dial it.
- The page title is “The Piercing Shop | Professional Body Piercings & Fine Jewellery”, and the H1 is “Precision Body Piercing & Fine Jewellery”. Neither says Hamilton.
- Everything is on one page. The footer links to Ear & Cartilage, Nose & Septum and other services, but they all jump to the same section, so Google has one page to rank for every piercing.
- On a phone, the first screen is the heading and a long paragraph. The price list and the Visit Studio button come after it.
- No LocalBusiness schema. Any made-up address, including /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml, loads the home page instead of a “not found” page or a real file.
- No links to Facebook or Instagram, no reviews shown, and no staff apart from Sue.
- Portfolio photos are labelled “Studio Piercing #1” to “#14”, which tells Google nothing about what they show.
- Small errors: “Waikatos’ longest established piercing studio”, “are love being part of your family’s journey”, and the two different earlobe prices.
- We couldn’t run PageSpeed Insights on the day. We will add the result.
SEO4 Audit Score: 15 out of 30
The same thirty checks we use for every business, from Good Honest Tattoos (16) and Skinks (14) to Cleaning Doctor (25). It scores what customers and Google can see online, not the piercing.
| Part | Passed | Failed |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews (5/10) | 499 reviews; 87 in the last 12 months; no day with 5 or more; replies personal and specific; staff named in 28% of all reviews | Average 4.64; replies to 43% overall (98% in the last year); 15 of 44 low reviews answered; low reviews 8.8%; second platform not confirmed |
| Search (2/10) | Google name, phone and website match the site; meta description | No Hamilton in title or H1; mobile speed not tested (scored 0 for now); no LocalBusiness schema; one page for all services; Call link in the wrong format; made-up pages load the home page; own site not on page one for its name |
| Marketing (8/10) | Clear promise (open 7 days, walk-ins, since 2000); full price list; a real speciality (babies and under-fives, the Sunday special); real photos; no booking needed; Facebook post within 60 days; piercing price question answered; no competitor ads on the name | No guarantee or re-piercing policy explained; no reviews on the site |
How we score
- Reviews: (1) rating 4.8 or higher; (2) 100 or more reviews; (3) 20 or more in the last 12 months; (4) no day with 5 or more reviews in the last two years; (5) replies to most reviews; (6) replies to every review at 3 stars or fewer; (7) replies are personal, not one template; (8) reviews at 3 stars or fewer under 5%; (9) a second platform with 10 or more reviews; (10) staff named in 10% or more of reviews.
- Search: (1) the Google name has no added keywords; (2) the Google phone and website match the site; (3) service and suburb or city in the page title and H1; (4) a meta description; (5) mobile PageSpeed score of 50 or more; (6) LocalBusiness schema; (7) a page for each main service; (8) tap-to-call on mobile; (9) HTTPS and no broken key links; (10) the business’s own site in the top 3 for its name.
- Marketing: (1) a clear promise above the fold; (2) prices or “from” prices; (3) a guarantee explained; (4) a clear speciality or offer that sets the business apart; (5) real photos or case studies; (6) a quote or booking within two clicks; (7) reviews shown on the site; (8) a social media post in the last 60 days; (9) the top “People also ask” question answered on the site; (10) no competitor ads on the brand name, or the business defends it.
- Each check scores 1 or 0. A check we couldn’t run on the day scores 0 until we can, and we say so.
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A plan for more customers
The shop already has what newcomers can’t buy: 25 years in Garden Place, a price list people trust and almost 500 reviews. The work now is making the website as strong as the Google profile, and making every walk-in feel like the reviews say most of them do.
| What | Why | Effort | Likely effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fix the Call link to +64 7 839 9100 | The button uses a number format phones may not dial | Very low | High |
| “Body Piercing Hamilton” in the title and H1 | Neither says Hamilton | Low | High |
| Get the website onto page one for its name | Fresha, Wheree and MapQuest show; the site doesn’t | Medium | High |
| A page each for ears, nose, babies’ ears and the Sunday special | One page can’t rank for every piercing search | Medium | High |
| One standard for the front counter | 15 of the low reviews are about attitude, not piercing | Medium | High |
| Reply to every low review with an offer to check and fix | Since 2025 the shop does; the older ones are still unanswered | Low | Medium |
| “Formerly Keen on Piercing” near the top of the site | People still search the old name, which now belongs to other stores | Very low | Medium |
| Team section, links to Facebook and Instagram, recent reviews on the site | Shona, Caleb and Max are named in 139 reviews, not on the site | Low | Medium |
| LocalBusiness schema, real 404, robots.txt and sitemap | Google gets one page and no structured details | Low | Low to medium |
Ideas that fit this shop
- A “first earrings” page for parents: what age, gun or needle, how long it takes, what to bring, healing, and photos of tiny studs. Parents search for this and the reviews already prove the point.
- Turn the Sunday special into a page with the history. Twenty dollars since 2000 is a story people share.
- Put a placement check into every needle piercing: mark, mirror, confirm. It answers the second-biggest group of complaints, and it is worth saying on the site that the shop does it.
- Ask for reviews at the free check-up, when the piercing has settled and the client knows it healed well.
- Say yes or no to Afterpay. People are already searching for it.
For piercing studios
A long review history is a strength and a drag at the same time: old low reviews keep the average down long after the problems are fixed. Try your own numbers:
How long until Google shows a higher rating?
Google rounds your average to one decimal. A long history with some old low reviews takes time to move, even when every recent review is great. Put in your own numbers.
We assume Google rounds the average to the nearest 0.1 and that the new reviews keep the average you enter. Default figures: The Piercing Shop Hamilton on 29 October 2026 (499 reviews, 87 in the last 12 months averaging 4.82).
Quote and Job Organiser: SEO4’s free app
Piercing studios see the same client several times: the piercing, the check-up, the downsize, new jewellery. Quote and Job Organiser is a free Android app on Google Play that keeps those visits together. No account, no subscription, no ads, and the data stays on your phone.
- A client record with the piercing, placement, jewellery size and metal.
- Photos at the piercing and at each check-up.
- A quote or invoice as a PDF by email, SMS or WhatsApp for jewellery orders.
- Notes for the downsize visit, so whoever is on shift knows what to fit.
Some studios want their own version: check-up reminders, a review request after the check-up, trainee days and specials. Send us your idea, even a rough one. We build custom apps for studios and small businesses, and they cost less than most owners expect. Tell us what you need.
Common questions
Most customers think so. On 29 October 2026 it had 4.6 stars from 499 Google reviews, 434 of them five stars, and the 87 reviews of the last 12 months averaged 4.82. Reviewers praise friendly staff, clean rooms and help with nerves.
Earlobes with the gun are $15 to $25 each including jewellery, and a nose stud with the gun is $35. Needle piercings are $30 plus jewellery from $10, or $20 plus jewellery on Sundays. Prices from thepiercingshop.co.nz, 29 October 2026.
No. It is walk-in only and open 7 days. Genital piercings are the exception: they are R18 and by appointment only.
Yes. Earlobe piercing for babies and under-fives is a speciality, from birth. Anyone under 16 needs a parent or legal guardian with them to sign consent.
At 6 Garden Place, Hamilton Central. It is open Monday to Friday 9.30am to 5.30pm and on weekends 10am to 4pm. Phone 07 839 9100 or email emailus@thepiercingshop.co.nz.
Sources and how we checked
- Google reviews: SEO4 collected every public Google review of The Piercing Shop Hamilton (499), Zippys Mobile Body Piercing (36) and Lovisa at The Base (28) on 29 October 2026, with date, stars and owner reply. Themes and names are keyword matches in reviews with text; we read every low review and sorted it by its main complaint; reviews are paraphrased without names.
- Google search: “the piercing shop hamilton”, “keen on piercing hamilton”, “piercing hamilton nz”, “body piercing hamilton nz”, “site:thepiercingshop.co.nz” and autocomplete, 29 October 2026, from New Zealand. Results depend on where and when you search.
- Website: thepiercingshop.co.nz, viewed on a phone and on desktop, 29 October 2026.
- Facebook and Instagram posts: as shown in Google results on 29 October 2026.
- PageSpeed Insights: no result on 29 October 2026.
- Screenshots of Google and thepiercingshop.co.nz are used for review and criticism and credited in each caption.
About this review
SEO4 is not connected with The Piercing Shop. They are not our client and did not pay for or see this review before publication. We review what customers and Google can see online, not anyone’s piercing.
If you work at The Piercing Shop and something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it: contact SEO4.
Corrections: none so far. Facts checked on 29 October 2026.
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