Facebook Rolls Out Reviews for Places
While we were all looking the other way, Facebook quietly introduced reviews to Facebook Pages for Places with very little fanfare. If you haven’t seen them yet, you’ll probably see them soon. It takes a while for a new feature to be rolled out to almost 1.5 billion users. We saw the new review buttons on many Facebook Pages for Places recently and thought we’d give you a peek under the hood.
In the example below, we check out the Facebook Page of our favorite hotel in Las Vegas, The Cosmopolitan.
You’ll notice that a review button has made its way between the Like and Message buttons right under the cover photo. If you click on the review button, you’ll be served up a review box where you can provide a 1 to 5 star rating, write a review, see other Facebook friends that have liked the page and you can even Like the page directly from the review box.
Before you hit post, you also have the option to choose who sees the review. Similarly to your other Facebook posts and status updates, you can select the following groups to see the post: public, friends, friends of friends, friends except acquaintances, custom or chose from one of your lists.
After you click post, you’ll be served up other Pages to review. These might look familiar to you because they’ll be places you’ve either checked into or have Liked on Facebook.
If you chose “public” when you post your review, your review will live on the Page you just reviewed and look like this:
What are your thoughts on reviews on Facebook Pages for Places? Do you think you’ll use them? Do you think they’ll have any impact on Yelp? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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A lot of people are really upset about the review and ratings system. It allows Facebook users to write content directly on your page and yet set privacy controls so that the page owner will never see the post, despite it being visible to thousands of others. Even when the review is visible there is no right of reply or ability to refute.
See https://facebook.com/changeratings for many stories about how bad the system is.
I will be very interested in hearing how to disable it. I have reviewed some places that I like that have shown up asking for my review. But it is really bugging me that I am receiving requests for reviews of places I have never been and of spam facebook pages that are not at all related to a real place I have been.
If you have and physical address you get a review button. If you get rid of the address then the review button and the stars disappear. Haven’t actually been able to see the reviews so don’t know where they live and what happens to them. Bloody Facebook!!!!….much just have to dump it all together.
There is another business that is in a nearby town that has a name similar to my business. In the past their low reviews have been mistakenly put on my page but I have been able to respond to those reviewers and clear things up…there is no way to do that on the new facebook review system that I can see. I only have 4 stars and I don’t know why??
Unfortunately there is very little documented about this function and Facebook is not opening up much about how to interact with reviews.
I don’t see any information about being able to reply to a review. This is something Facebook needs to address immediately.
I don’t see any information about being able to reply to a review. This is something Facebook needs to address immediately.
Not sure if it’s rolled out globally yet. We are seeing it on several different accounts here in the US but sometimes they roll out in the US before launching to the rest of the world.
Can anyone explain in a little more detail how this works? I have 1 review (that I can actually see) which is 5 stars but my overall review is 2 stars. Are there negative reviews out there that I can’t see? I’m extremely confused…
I agree that this needs to be tweaked ASAP. The point of having a Facebook page was to engage with customers – post helpful info, thank them when they have nice things to say, and address their questions or concerns. With this review button I didn’t ask for, I can’t message, comment, or find any way to know why that customer had a bad experience or what they think we could do better. The review could be completely baseless and I have no way to even find out more. I’m not trying to remove the review (though I think I should be able to disable that feature if I want), I just would like, at the very least, to be able to engage.
I can only see a few reviews (as a page owner) and they are five stars, but on the phone, I’m rated 4 starts with 32 reviews. I can’t see these reviews and as above, would like to know if you can reply to them if they are negative. We should be able to as eliminate slander.
can you reply to reviews. We just got a negative one but i can’t figure out how to reply to them.
I haven’t found any information about activation or deactivation. I will keep digging and let you know as soon as I hear something.
How to acivate or deactivate / disable the new review-button?
There has been very little news about this. I’m not sure you ad the review button or if Facebook adds it to any Facebook Page that is a Place. As soon as we hear we will be sure to let you know.
How does it work?? A tutorial will be great. I saw the “review” button, but how exactly work? What should I do to include this into my page/application?
Zero ability for a business owner to deal with negative reviews that are not publicly shared. You can review a place you have never been to anonymously and bring down their ‘star’ rating, having never set foot or even used any of their services. More openness on this function is needed ASAP.
Is this rolled out for india yet? and is it available to all in the US? Any news?