How to Get Facebook Recommendations (and Handle Bad Ones)

To get Facebook recommendations, make sure reviews are turned on in your Page settings, then ask every customer to visit your Page’s Reviews section and answer “Do you recommend [your business]?” with a short comment. Reply to what comes in, and report only the recommendations that break Facebook’s Community Standards.

Facebook recommendations work differently from Google reviews, and many businesses still have old assumptions from the star-rating days. This guide covers how the system works now and how to build a steady flow of genuine recommendations.

What Facebook recommendations are

In 2018, Facebook replaced the old one-to-five star reviews on business Pages with Recommendations. Instead of picking a number of stars, a visitor answers a yes or no question: do you recommend this business? They can add text, photos and tags to explain why.

A few things carried over and a few changed:

• Old star reviews still count. Facebook’s help pages say a Page’s rating is based on the reviews and recommendations people have shared about it, so older star reviews still feed into the overall score alongside newer recommendations.
• There’s a minimum. Facebook only shows a rating once a Page has at least five reviews.
• Only public ones count. If someone posts a recommendation with a restricted audience, it doesn’t count toward the Page’s rating.
• Facebook doesn’t verify purchases. Its help pages state that it doesn’t check whether reviewers actually bought from the business.

How recommendations show on your Page

Recommendations appear in a Reviews section on your Page, reached from the Page’s details area. Visitors see the overall rating (once you have enough), the number of people it’s based on, and individual recommendations with the reviewer’s name and comments.

Because the question is yes or no, a single “doesn’t recommend” hurts proportionally more on a Page with few recommendations than on one with many. That’s the practical reason to build volume: not to hide criticism, but so that one unhappy customer isn’t a large share of your overall rating.

How to turn on reviews for your Page

If your Page has no Reviews section, the feature may be switched off. Facebook’s current steps, per its Help Center, are:

1. Log into Facebook, click your profile photo in the top right and select See all profiles, then choose your business Page.
2. Click your Page’s profile photo in the top right again.
3. Select Settings and privacy, then Settings.
4. Click Page and tagging.
5. Find Allow others to view and leave reviews on your Page? and switch it on.

Facebook changes its menus from time to time, so if the wording differs, search “reviews” in your Page settings. Turning the setting off removes the rating and reviews from your Page, which some businesses consider after a bad run. That usually looks worse than a few critical comments, because customers notice a business with no reviews at all.

How to ask customers for Facebook recommendations

Facebook allows businesses to ask for recommendations. The basics are the same as on any platform: ask everyone, ask at the right moment, make it easy, and don’t pay for it.

1. Get the link. Open your Page, go to the Reviews section, and copy the address from your browser. That’s the link you’ll share.
2. Ask every customer. Send the same request to every customer, not just the ones you expect to be happy. Selective asking skews the picture and is exactly what platforms and regulators object to.
3. Pick the right channel. Facebook recommendations suit businesses whose customers already follow them there: restaurants, salons, gyms, local retailers, event venues. A follow-up message, a post-purchase email or a sign at the counter all work.
4. Ask for honesty, not a yes. “Would you share whether you’d recommend us?” is fine. “Please recommend us!” asks for a particular answer.
5. Keep incentives out. Don’t offer discounts, freebies or contest entries for recommendations. The FTC’s 2024 rule on consumer reviews prohibits incentives conditioned on a review being positive, and Meta’s Community Standards treat fake or bought engagement as inauthentic behavior.

If Google is where most of your customers find you, keep Google as your main review focus and treat Facebook as a secondary ask. Our guide on getting more Google reviews covers the Google side in detail.

Example request wording

These are illustrative. Adapt them to your business and tone.

Thanks for coming to Harbor Yoga this month. If you have a minute, we’d appreciate it if you shared on our Facebook Page whether you’d recommend us, and why: [Reviews page link]

Hi Carla, thanks for choosing Bloom Floral for the wedding. If you’d be willing to leave an honest recommendation on our Facebook Page, it helps other couples find us: [Reviews page link]

For a post on your own Page, keep it low-key and occasional. A post every week asking for recommendations looks needy. A short ask after a busy season, alongside a thank-you, reads naturally.

How to reply to Facebook recommendations

You can reply to a recommendation as your Page, the same way you’d reply to a comment. Replies are public and show under the recommendation.

• Positive recommendations: a short, specific thank-you signed by a real person. Our guide to responding to positive reviews has examples.
• Negative ones: acknowledge the issue, stay calm, and offer to continue in Messenger. Keep the public reply short, and don’t reveal anything about the customer that they didn’t post themselves.
• Comment threads: other people can comment under a recommendation. Don’t get pulled into long public arguments. One calm reply is usually enough.

How to report a recommendation that breaks the rules

You can’t delete a recommendation from your Page, and Facebook won’t remove one just because it’s negative. You can report recommendations that break Facebook’s Community Standards, such as harassment, hate speech, spam or posts from fake accounts.

Facebook’s Help Center gives these steps:

1. Go to Reviews under Details below your Page’s cover photo.
2. Select See all next to Recent reviews.
3. Click the three-dot options menu on the recommendation you want to report.
4. Choose Report post and follow the prompts.

Facebook reviews the report against its Community Standards and may remove recommendations that don’t follow them. Two limits are worth knowing: old star-only ratings can’t be reported, and if a recommendation disappears it may have been removed already or had its audience restricted by the person who posted it.

When the problem goes beyond a review, for example a post about you elsewhere on Facebook, a different set of reporting routes applies. Our guide to removing a Facebook post about you covers those.

Facebook ratings in Google results

Your Facebook rating doesn’t only live on Facebook. Google can show ratings from other websites, including Facebook, on a business’s Google profile in a section often labeled “Reviews from the web.”

Google’s help pages are clear on the limits: you can’t choose which websites appear there, and you can’t stop reviews from other websites showing. If there’s a problem with a rating that comes from Facebook, you have to take it up with Facebook, not Google. In practice, that means your Facebook rating can be seen by people who never visit your Page, which is another reason not to neglect it.

A worked example: a cafe with a neglected Page

This scenario is illustrative. A neighborhood cafe has a Facebook Page with eleven old star reviews from years ago and three recent recommendations, one of them a “doesn’t recommend” about slow service on a weekend.

1. Check settings. The owner confirms reviews are switched on and copies the Reviews link.
2. Reply first. She replies to the negative recommendation: acknowledges the weekend wait, mentions that they’ve added a second barista on Saturdays, and invites the customer to message her directly.
3. Ask regularly, and ask everyone. A small card by the register and a line in the loyalty app’s receipt invite customers to share on Facebook whether they’d recommend the cafe. No discount is attached.
4. Report only what qualifies. One recommendation is a spam post advertising another business. She reports it. The critical one about service stays up, because it’s genuine.
5. Keep the habit. Replies go out twice a week alongside Google replies.

How many recommendations come in depends on the cafe’s customers and how consistently staff mention it. What changes immediately is that anyone who visits the Page sees an active business that responds.

Common mistakes

• Turning reviews off after one bad recommendation. It removes your rating entirely and looks like hiding.
• Asking staff, friends and family to recommend you. It’s thin evidence, it can breach the FTC rule, and savvy customers can often spot it.
• Offering a reward for recommendations. A reward tied to a positive recommendation breaks the FTC rule, and even small freebies for any recommendation make every one on your Page look less credible.
• Reporting everything negative. Reports are for rule-breaking content. Over-reporting wastes time and changes nothing for genuine criticism.
• Ignoring the Page. Unanswered recommendations, positive or negative, suggest nobody’s there.

When it’s worth getting help

Most small businesses can manage Facebook recommendations themselves in a few minutes a week. If you’re handling multiple locations, several review platforms, or a Page with a pile of unanswered criticism, our review management service can take on replies, requests and reporting across platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Does Facebook still have star reviews?

No. Facebook replaced star reviews on business Pages with yes or no Recommendations in 2018. Older star reviews still contribute to a Page’s overall rating, alongside newer recommendations.

How many Facebook recommendations do I need to show a rating?

Facebook shows a Page rating once the Page has at least five reviews. Only reviews and recommendations shared publicly count toward it.

Can I delete a bad Facebook recommendation?

No. You can’t delete recommendations from your Page. You can report one that breaks Facebook’s Community Standards, and Facebook decides whether to remove it. You can also turn reviews off entirely, but that removes all of them and your rating.

Why don't I see a Reviews section on my Facebook Page?

Reviews may be switched off. Go to your Page’s Settings, open Page and tagging, and turn on the option that allows others to view and leave reviews on your Page.

Do Facebook recommendations show up on Google?

They can. Google sometimes shows ratings from other sites, including Facebook, on a business’s Google profile. You can’t choose or block which sites appear, and problems with a Facebook rating have to be raised with Facebook.