How Facebook’s Changing Review System Affects Your Top Rated Local® Experience

Facebook is in the process of switching from their traditional Reviews system to a system that focuses only on Recommendations. Wondering what this means for Top Rated Local® users? We can help you with that. Here are the ‘need-to-knows’ regarding these changes.

This Change Will Be Gradual

Although Facebook Recommendations are fully replacing Facebook Business Reviews, this won’t happen all at once. At the moment, Facebook business pages are showing both Facebook Business Reviews and Facebook Recommendations. 

Facebook Is Implementing a Proprietary Star Rating System

While users can currently rate their experience with businesses on a scale of one to five stars through the Reviews program, they will instead be able to only recommend or not recommend a business when this new system is put into place. Instead of a cumulative star rating, Facebook will create a proprietary rating score based on how many people do or do not recommend a page. This score is influenced by people leaving recommendations directly on the page itself or recommending it to their Facebook Friends. No data regarding pages’ individual overall ratings is available at this time.

This Feature Is Still Undergoing Testing

Since this feature is so new, it is still being tested out to ensure it runs as well as possible for its users. Because of this, some Facebook users only see the option to recommend businesses and others still see the reviews option. 

We Temporarily Cannot Provide a Specific Number for Facebook

Because we rely solely on consistent and accurate data, we are unable to provide specific Facebook data during this phase. When the new system is complete, that may change. For now, we will continue to have Facebook source links on the page, marked as “see recommendations.” Facebook will continue to impact business’ overall Rating Scores™.