How does Facebook calculate star rating?

Facebook recently introduced new updates for Business Pages.

The main goal of the newly redesigned pages is to provide easier ways for people to interact with local businesses on social media.

According to Facebook’s VP of Local, Alex Himel, Over 1.6 billion people around the world are connected to a small business on Facebook. And starting from August 2018 Facebook is making new changes to Facebook Business Pages to help more people connect with local businesses.

One of the main updates is the further development of the feature Recommendations that is an evolved version of the Facebook reviews system.

As stated in the official update, Facebook is making Recommendations from the business’s community more helpful:

‘People use Recommendations to ask their communities where to go, where to eat, or where to shop. We’re making those Recommendations more prominent on Pages.’

We are all aware that reviews and recommendations are extremely important for any company’s reputation.

And positive reviews or 5-star reviews from previous customers are becoming a new channel to build trust among potential customers.

What is very interesting is that 1 in 3 Facebook users are using the platform to find reviews and recommendations.

In this post, we are publishing everything you need to know about this new feature, how it will affect your Facebook presence, and how to make the most out of it.

This is why you need to pay attention to these updates and continue reading what is changed and how to make the most out of Facebook Recommendations.

This new feature is already rolled out and businesses will have the chance to see new reviews design on their Facebook Page. The main change of the system is that the Recommendations option is integrated within the reviews and all recommendations that were previously given by customers or other Facebook users will be also listed in this Reviews/Recommendations section.

Manage Your Facebook Recommendations

Display social reviews, boost trust and increase conversions on your website.

This means that recommendations are not only the opinions given by customers directly on the business’s Facebook page but also when people respond to their friends when they look for a recommendation on Facebook.

Note: The old Facebook reviews are safe and sound, and your Facebook Page will continue to display all previous reviews that you’ve generated.

How are Recommendations different from Reviews?

Well, there are differences:

• Location – The Recommendations appear on the upper-right side,, and Reviews appear on the left-hand side (if not hidden).
• Reach – Reviews are visible to any Facebook user. With Recommendations, you can limit the reach and make it more personal.
• Format – Reviews have star ratings and comments. Recommendations have only comments.
• Reactions – Anyone can comment and like a Review, but only people in the person’s network can comment and like a Recommendation.
• Specifics – People can recommend a specific business feature (choose a tag that best describes their recommendation) and share a photo, and Reviews don’t have such an option.

So, the bottom line is:

• The tab is called “Reviews”
• The feature is called “Recommendations”

Main benefits of the new Facebook Recommendations

The changes in the reviews system to recommendations are providing more options for customers to give their opinions about a certain business. Here are some of the benefits:

Increase reach with Recommendations

Your Facebook Page score will be reflected across Facebook and especially at places where customers make relevant decisions, such as Maps.
Recommendations are discoverable across Facebook when people are searching for, or talking about your business. The best thing is that Facebook will show first the recommendations provided by the closest friends which will empower the purchasing decisions and bring greater trust

Post photos about the business

This option was not previously enabled in the reviews section. Now, if you tag the business in the comments section when a friend asks for a recommendation, you have the option to also post gifs or photos. The cool thing is, that all these posts will be displayed in the Recommendations section of the business’s Facebook Page as customer reviews.

The best, mobile form for leaving a recommendation has the option to upload a photo from the phone and publish it together with the text.

Note: The character limit for a desktop recommendation is 25 and for mobile is 50.

Tag Facebook Recommendations

When a customer leaves a recommendation directly on the Facebook page, they will have the option to choose a tag that best describes their recommendation. These Facebook tags work like hashtags for businesses and the Facebook system generates them based on words used in the past reviews.

Here is an example of how the tags are displayed when you try to add a recommendation on mobile:

How the new Facebook rating score is calculated

As outlined in the official Facebook help center, the overall Facebook Page score is calculated as follows:

A Page’s rating is based on multiple sources, such as the reviews and Recommendations people share about business Pages on Facebook.

Or just click the help icon below the average score in the Reviews tab, as shown below:

How to activate Facebook Recommendations

If you’ve already activated the Reviews tab then you don’t need to change anything. Please note that the Recommendations are a replacement of the Reviews tab and the process to activate it is the same as before.

If you still don’t have activated the Recommendations on your Facebook Page here is how to get the Facebook reviews tab:

1. Log in to your Facebook account and go to your business Facebook page
2. Navigate to the ‘Settings’ section on your left-hand side
3. Click ‘Templates and Tabs’
4. Find the review tab named ‘Reviews’ in the list of tabs and activate it

How to recommend a business on Facebook

This process is the one that has the biggest change.

To recommend a business on Facebook, you will need to open the business’s Facebook Page that you want to recommend.

Please note that previously, there was an option to ‘Write a review‘ and select the review score from 1-5. Now you do not actually leave a review for the business but you are recommending it. You have only two recommendation options, to select ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ which means you want to recommend the business or not. Simple as that.

Here are the steps for how to leave a Facebook review:

1. Click the Reviews/Recommendations tab
2. Click ‘Yes’ to recommend the Page
3. Write your recommendation and if you use mobile upload a photo along with the recommendation text
4. You can also choose a tag such as great service, amazing staff or similar
5. Click Post

Additionally, you can recommend a business by leaving a comment by tagging a business’s Facebook Page when some of your Facebook friends ask for a Recommendation.

And this tutorial is very important for business owners who want to get more reviews so they can explain this step-by-step process to their customers on how to navigate tit their Facebook Page reviews tab and how to recommend their business.

How to report a Recommendation

Most of the online reviews platforms such as Google, TripAdvisor, and Yelp allow an option to report negative reviews that a business wants to be removed or delegated from their business listing or Facebook page in the case of Facebook reviews.

Similar to the previous option for reporting reviews, now this option is also available and you can report a Recommendation that violates Facebook’s Community Standards.

To do this, just follow the steps:

1. Go to the recommendation that you want to report and click the 3 dots in the top right corner
2. Select “Find support or report Recommendation”
3. Choose the topic and click “Submit”

In this relation we recommend reading the following blog post:

Read more: How to Respond to Negative Facebook Reviews >>

How to get more Facebook recommendations

if you are a business and starting out with Facebook recommendations, getting the first batch is very important to boost your trust in this social media network.

The simple steps on how to get more Facebook reviews are the following;

• Send emails to customers with a link to your Facebook reviews section
• Print QR codes on menus or flyers with the link to the reviews tab
• Embed a ‘Review us on Facebook‘ button on your website
• Add Facebook reviews badge on your website
• Create Facebook ads with your reviews

And for more reach and greater appeal of your Facebook reviews, you can embed them on your website. Read the section below and check the complete guide on Facebook reviews.

How to embed Facebook recommendations on your website?

With the evolution of the Facebook reviews system, you can use a platform such as EmbedReviews to help you generate the new recommendations posted on your Facebook Page.

The system automatically generates the ‘Yes’ recommendations and also the ‘No’ recommendations, that you can display on your website with a simple embeddable code.

Feel free to try EmbedReviews, and start managing your Facebook Recommendations.

I hope this article will help you improve your Facebook presence and if you have any thoughts, feel free to reach out.

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