Facebook's platform offers users numerous features and tools — and for business owners, one of the most important is Facebook's recommendations feature.
This feature, which is located in the "Reviews" section of your Facebook page, allows users to answer "Yes" or "No" to whether they recommend your business. Users can also leave a short comment about their experience.
Since Facebook is the second most popular platform for checking reviews of local businesses, your Facebook recommendations have an enormous impact on your brand's success. Learning to manage them effectively will empower you to get more reviews, boost customer retention, generate social proof, and get noticed by new customers.
This guide will show you how to get started. It explains how Facebook reviews and ratings work, how to ask for recommendations on Facebook, and how your business can streamline its Facebook review management process. It also provides quick answers to some common questions about Facebook recommendation management.
According to a 2024 survey conducted by BrightLocal, which sought out opinions from more than 1,100 participants, Facebook is the most widely used review platform other than Google.
Nearly half of the survey respondents — 45% — said they used Facebook to "evaluate local businesses" during the past year, surpassing Yellow Pages (6%), Angi (7%), Healthgrades (9%), Trustpilot (10%), Apple Maps (16%), the Better Business Bureau (20%), Tripadvisor (21%), and, by a slim margin, even Yelp (44%).
Creating a Facebook page for your business will help millions of potential customers find you, while simultaneously giving you a free platform to advertise on.
There's also another benefit: the more positive Facebook recommendations you receive, the more likely your business is to be highly rated on the platform, giving you a visibility boost that can drive more traffic through your doors.
Let's take a closer look at how Facebook recommendations work, how to get more of them, and whether Facebook still allows users to leave reviews and star ratings.
Before 2018, Facebook's review system worked like a traditional review site, such as Yelp or Google Maps: users could post negative or positive reviews to a company's page, accompanied by a rating of up to five stars.
In 2018, Facebook launched a new system of "recommendations," which are featured on both the desktop version and mobile app, to replace and streamline the platform's former review system. Facebook "reviews" now refer to recommendations.
Instead of giving users the option to rate the business a certain number of stars, the new system simply prompts users to click or tap a "Yes" or "No" Facebook button:
This button is located in the "Reviews" section of your business profile:
Facebook encourages users to include a brief review explaining their "Yes" or "No" recommendation.
Users can include photos of the business location, write a short comment about their experience, and select from Facebook's tag suggestions:
The recommendations you receive also influence your rating, which looks like a percentage — for example, "90% recommend (25 reviews)”:
According to Facebook support, "A Page's rating is based on the reviews and recommendations people share about the business Page on Facebook. Only Pages that turn on recommendations may show a rating, and a Page may not have a rating if it hasn't received at least 5 reviews."
However, only public recommendations impact your rating.
As Facebook explains, "[W]hen someone recommends a business, they can select an audience to share it with. For example, if they post a recommendation and select Friends as the audience, only their friends can see their recommendation. Only recommendations that are shared publicly are included in a Page's overall rating."
To see your company's Facebook rating, follow these simple steps:
Research shows that 50% of consumers trust business reviews "as much as personal recommendations from friends and family."
It also shows that most consumers — 59% in 2024 — expect businesses to have at least 20 to 99 reviews.
The more reviews and recommendations you acquire, the more social proof you'll build, and the easier it will become to attract new customers.
The question is, what are the most effective ways of requesting reviews from customers?
Research has an answer to that, too. Here's how BrightLocal ranks 10 different methods of asking for customer reviews, based on the percentage of respondents who said the method would make them "more likely to write a review":
Only 13% of respondents said that "none of the above" methods would increase their likelihood of sharing a review.
Remember to send friendly follow up messages to customers who don’t initially respond. You can also encourage customers to share reviews by posting requests to your feed, but be careful not to incentivize positive reviews or violate other platform guidelines.
Spend less time managing your Facebook reviews and more time focusing on your priority projects. Review management becomes stress-free and streamlined with Shout About Us — a mobile-friendly, AI-powered platform that scales to your small, midsize, or large business' needs.
Shout About Us offers the full suite of review management services, enabling your business to design a custom strategy. Review management solutions we offer include:
You'll also receive custom reports and insights, personalized assistance with set-up, and U.S.-based customer support.
All of the above features are included with ReviewNavigator. We also offer ResponseScribe, a done-for-you review response service that delivers personalized replies to your customers on 50+ platforms in under 24 hours.
Track and analyze customer feedback, respond to positive and negative reviews, and get more Facebook recommendations — all from one secure and intuitive dashboard.
With more than 10 years of experience managing and responding to millions of reviews on behalf of brands like Kia, Burger King, and Chick-fil-A, you can feel confident your reputation is in reliable hands.
Get started growing your business today by booking a demo of Shout About Us.
Done-for-you review management
built for local businesses.
