Hotel Digital Marketing Blog

Facebook Star Reviews Going Away

Say goodbye to Facebook reviews and hello to recommendations.

Facebook has just announced that they will be switching from review ratings to recommendations on their local business pages.

Two Choices: users will now have to choose between only Yes or No as their recommendation when reviewing a business. They can no longer choose a star rating or leave a company a neutral review.

This new process is quicker and easier than the standard 5 star rating system.

After choosing yes or no, users are asked to explain why they would or would not recommend the business.

Moving forward, Facebook users and businesses will need to read the actual text portion of the recommendation in order to gain a better understanding of why the customer chose yes or no.

Because of the new process, businesses may see an increase in the number of reviews they receive on Facebook.

However, with only two options instead of using a scale of 5 stars, there leaves no room for any grey areas in the recommendation. There’s no more being unsure of a business and giving them an “okay” rating. So Facebook does run the risk of gathering feedback from those who will say they recommend a business, BUT… and leave a negative comment to make up for not wanting to leave the equivalent of a full 5 star rating.

This can cause inflated ratings that lean way more in the yes direction even though that business’ customers may not be fully supporting their yes answers.

Rich Endorsements

An optional feature of this new update is called “Rich Endorsements” which will allow Facebook users to include pictures of their experiences as a part of their recommendation.

It will also suggest different “tags” for the user to choose or search for that can be used to describe the business’ characteristics. The most popular tags for a business will be suggested to others who are rating the same business so that popular themes can emerge and make it easier to see what the company is known for.

Authentic Recommendations

Making sure a company’s reviews are genuine is important. Facebook realizes this and has announced that they will make it easier to report recommendations that are fraudulent, unfair, spam, inappropriate, or paid for. Just flag an unauthentic review at the click of a button and select the reason for why so that it can be removed quickly.

With the new updates to Facebook reviews, we will have to wait and see how they impact a company’s overall average ratings across platforms. Will other review systems interpret a yes as 5 stars and a no as 1 star? Or will they separate Facebook recommendation feedback from the standard 5 star ratings?

It will also be fascinating to see if this new yes or no recommendation system will become a trend and roll over to other review platforms in the future.