Facebook doesn't really have "reviews" any more. Since 2018 it has had Recommendations: a visitor answers one question — Do you recommend [Business]? — with yes or no, adds a short written explanation, and optionally attaches photos. Those answers stack up on your Page's Reviews tab as a count of recommendations rather than an average out of five.
That difference matters more than it looks. A single one-star Google review drags a visible average down for months. On Facebook, one "no" sits in a list next to your yeses — less mathematically punishing, but far more readable, because there is no number for a browser to skim past. People actually read the text.
How Facebook Recommendations Differ From Google Reviews
If you've already built a review practice on Google, most of the mechanics transfer but a few assumptions don't. This is the short version of what changes.
| Google reviews | Facebook Recommendations | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of feedback | 1–5 stars, text optional | Yes / No, short text required |
| Headline metric | Star average | Count of recommendations |
| Written by | Anyone with a Google account | Anyone with a Facebook account |
| Discovery | Google Search and Maps | Facebook search, Page visits, Group and friend asks |
| Removing a bad one | Report only | Report only |
| Turning it off | Not possible | Possible — the whole tab, all at once |
Facebook does still surface a rating on some Pages, calculated from recommendations plus older star reviews left before the change. Treat it as secondary — the unit people actually give you is a yes or a no with a sentence attached.
The bigger difference is where they travel. Google reviews live inside your listing; Facebook Recommendations leak outward — into Facebook search, into friend-to-friend asks, and into local Group threads where your Page gets tagged in the comments. That last one is the underrated channel: a Page with thirty recommendations and one with two look very different when both get name-dropped in the same "anyone know a good…?" thread.
If you're building the wider picture, this sits alongside getting more Google reviews as one half of a local trust footprint, and inside the broader discipline of reputation management for small businesses.
Step 1 — Turn the Tab On and Check Your Category
Plenty of Pages have Recommendations switched off and their owners don't know it. Before anything else, open your Page while logged out (or in a private window) and look for a Reviews tab. No tab, no recommendations — every ask you send will land on a dead end.
Two things control it:
The toggle. Meta reshuffles Page settings regularly. As of November 2024 you'll find it either under Settings → Privacy → Page and tagging, or under Templates and Tabs on older Page layouts. If the menus don't match what you're seeing, search "reviews" inside your Page settings rather than hunting through submenus.
Your Page category. Recommendations are built for local businesses. A Page categorised as a local service, restaurant, retailer or clinic — with a real address filled in — will have the option; some brand, product and public-figure categories won't. If the toggle isn't there at all, your category is usually why, and fixing it is worth doing anyway for the reasons covered in the guide to optimising your Facebook Business Page.
Once the tab is live, grab the direct link. Appending /reviews to your Page URL normally lands people straight on it — open it in a private window to confirm before you put it in an email, because a broken link kills a request sequence quietly.
Step 2 — An Ethical Ask Sequence
Meta, like Google, treats incentivised feedback as manipulation. Don't offer a discount, an entry into a draw, or free anything in exchange for a recommendation. Also don't screen: asking only the customers you're confident will say yes is review gating, it's against the spirit of every platform's rules, and it produces a feed of praise that reads as fake to anyone paying attention.
What works is asking everyone, once, at the right moment, with one gentle nudge if nothing happens.
Pick the moment, not the channel
The moment beats the medium every time. Ask when the value is visible: the day after the job is finished, when the order arrives, at the end of the appointment. A request sent two weeks later competes with everything else in the inbox.
| Business type | Ask trigger | Best channel |
|---|---|---|
| Trades and home services | Job signed off, same or next day | SMS with the direct link |
| Clinics and appointments | Follow-up confirmation | Email, one line, link at the end |
| Restaurants and retail | At the point of leaving | Verbal ask, QR code on the receipt |
| B2B services | Project milestone or renewal | Personal email from the person who did the work |
The wording
Short, specific, no pressure. Something close to:
"Hi Sam — glad the new boiler is running properly. We're a small business and Facebook recommendations genuinely help people find us. If you've got a minute: [link]. Totally fine if not."
Two details do the work. Naming the specific job proves it isn't a bulk send, and giving them an easy out makes people more likely to act, not less. Because Facebook requires written text, tell them what to write about — "a line about how the install went is plenty" — otherwise the blank box is the thing that stops them.
The monthly Page post
Individual asks are the engine. A recurring public ask is the flywheel. Once a month, post to your Page: a short thank-you to recent customers, one line explaining that recommendations help other local people find you, and a link to the Reviews tab. It works because it reaches the people who already like you but were never in a one-to-one ask sequence.
This is the piece most businesses intend to do and forget by week three — and it's the easiest thing to put on a calendar and stop thinking about. In SocialKit, a recurring monthly "review ask" post sits on the visual calendar alongside the rest of your Facebook plan and auto-publishes like any other slot (plans start at €29/month Solo, €17.40/month billed annually, as of November 2024). Pair it with the best time to post on Facebook so the ask lands when your audience is around.
Group asks — with care
Local Groups are where recommendation requests happen organically, and most of them ban self-promotion. Don't recommend your own business in a thread. Do reply as the Page — a genuine thanks — whenever a customer tags you in one. That reply is visible to everyone reading and costs nothing. If you run your own community, the dynamics are covered in the guide to building a Facebook Group community.
Step 3 — Replying to Recommendations, Positive and Negative
Every recommendation is a public thread you can post in as the Page. Most businesses reply to none of them, which is a free differentiator.
For a yes: reply within a couple of days, reference the specific thing they mentioned, keep it to two sentences. "Thanks Priya — glad the rewiring came in on schedule. Shout if the new sockets give you any trouble." Skip the corporate template; it reads as one.
For a no: the goal is not to win the argument. It's to show the next hundred people reading it that you're reasonable.
A framework that holds up:
- Reply once, publicly, quickly. Silence reads as guilt. A same-week reply beats a perfect one written a month later.
- Acknowledge the specific complaint in their words, without the word "unfortunately."
- Correct one thing, only if it's material — a wrong date or price that changes the story, stated plainly. Never a point-by-point rebuttal.
- Move it off the thread. "Can you email me directly at [address] — I'd like to sort this out." Name a real person if you can.
- Stop there. Arguing in public turns one bad recommendation into a spectacle, and the spectacle outlives the complaint.
- If it gets resolved, say so in a short final comment: "We refunded the call-out charge and re-fitted the valve on Tuesday." Future readers see the outcome, not just the accusation.
When to report, and the nuclear option
You cannot delete someone else's recommendation. You can report ones that break Facebook's rules — spam, abuse, or content that clearly isn't about a real experience with your business. Expect a slow and inconsistent process, and don't build your plan around it.
You can switch the entire Reviews tab off, which hides every recommendation at once. There's exactly one situation where that's sensible: a coordinated brigading incident where dozens of unrelated accounts pile in — and you switch it back on the moment that passes. Doing it during a genuine complaint wave just destroys the social proof you spent a year building, in full view of anyone who checked your Page last month.
Step 4 — Put Recommendations Back to Work
A recommendation sitting on the Reviews tab is worth something. Turned into a post, it's worth more — your Page feed reaches people who will never click a tab.
Ask permission first — a quick comment or message is enough — then reshare. A plain quote card with the customer's words, their first name and the job you did beats an over-designed graphic almost every time; check the image dimensions reference so the text isn't cropped in feed. The guide on building social proof covers where these fit in the wider content mix, and testimonial posts on social media covers the format itself.
The practical rhythm: one testimonial reshare every two or three weeks, scheduled ahead so it doesn't depend on you remembering, batched three or four at a time the day you collect them. The same quote works on LinkedIn or Instagram with a caption tweak — exactly what a compose-once, customise-per-platform workflow is for.
One honest limitation: SocialKit is a scheduling and calendar tool, not a monitoring one. No social inbox, no review alerts, no comment moderation queue — it won't tell you when a new recommendation lands. For that, turn on Page notifications and check Meta Business Suite, which is free and where the notification originates anyway. The calendar handles the other half, the half that fails from neglect rather than missing alerts: the recurring ask and the steady drip of reshares.
Start Here: Your First 30 Days
A sequence you can run without adding anything to your week after the setup:
- Day 1 — Log out, view your Page, confirm the Reviews tab exists. Fix the toggle or the category if it doesn't, and test the
/reviewslink. - Day 1 — Write your ask, with the specific-job placeholder in it: one email version, one SMS version.
- Day 2 — Send it to the last ten customers you'd happily work with again. All ten, not the five you're sure about.
- Day 3 — Reply to every existing recommendation, positive and negative, oldest included. Twenty minutes.
- Week 1 — Add the ask wherever your customer communication already ends: job-completion text, invoice email, checkout receipt.
- Week 1 — Schedule the monthly review-ask post six months out, plus a recurring testimonial reshare every fortnight.
- Week 2 — Set a standing fifteen-minute slot to check Page notifications and reply to anything new.
- Day 30 — Compare your recommendation count to day one, read the negatives for patterns, and fix the operational thing that shows up twice.
The businesses that end up with a wall of recommendations aren't running clever campaigns. They asked every customer, once, at the right moment, and replied to everyone who answered. Fold that into the rest of your local Facebook marketing and it compounds quietly for years.