How to Remove Facebook Reviews (or Disable Them)

Potential clients frequently ask us how to remove reviews from Facebook. But think about that question for a moment. It can actually mean several different things, right? So we need to dig a little deeper…

• Are you trying to report and remove fake reviews from Facebook?
• Do you want to remove bad reviews from your Facebook business page?
• Did you write an inflammatory review that you want to delete?
• Do you want to turn off Recommendations and remove all reviews from your Facebook page?

We’ll answer each of these questions in this step-by-step guide.

Can’t you just ignore bad Facebook reviews?

Absolutely not.

Customers overwhelmingly turn to business reviews before they hand over their hard-earned cash. Don’t believe me? Here are some Facebook review statistics to prove it:

• 90 percent of consumers look at online reviews before they visit a business.
• 84 percent of people trust them as much as they would trust a personal recommendation.
• 2 in 3 Facebook users visit local business pages at least once a week.
• 1 in 3 people use the platform to look for Recommendations.

Therefore, as a business owner, it’s vital for you to handle Facebook reviews that don’t reflect your company.

If your Facebook page contains unanswered bad reviews, potential customers could slip through your fingers. Take a guess at how much one bad review could cost your business?

FYI – A bad corporate reputation costs corporations hundreds of millions of dollars. Want proof? One CEO’s reputation cost his company more than 96 million dollars within a few hours.

How to report and remove fake Facebook reviews

Facebook should remove certain reviews and Recommendations automatically. For example, spam content and hate speech violate Facebook’s community standards and will be deleted. In addition, any review that is totally irrelevant to your business, such as those that neglect to mention you at all, should also qualify for unprompted removal.

But false reviews may go undetected. Don’t worry. Here’s a few tricks to pick them out.

Tips to spot fake reviews on Facebook

If you find suspicious reviews on your Facebook page, first make sure they’re legitimate. Check your records and verify that the transactions happened the way the customers claim. Can you find records of the customers? Do your transaction logs match up with their descriptions? If not, you might be dealing with fake Facebook reviews.

Fraudulent negative reviews can stem from a number of sources: competing businesses, resentful former employees, spammers, people who mistakenly post their review on the wrong business page, etc. Here are several ways to identify frauds:

• Vague descriptions
• Reviewer is connected with a competitor (or former employee)
• Recommending a competitor in the complaint

Regardless of whether or not bad Facebook reviews are true, you should respond to all of them.

Start with an apology. Then mention that you’re unable to find a record of his or her transaction. This will send a message to fraudulent commenters that you’re onto their game while still showing off your excellent customer service. Outright calling the complaint fake could backfire and make other customers trust you less.

After responding, the next step is to report them. Here’s how:

Steps to report fake Facebook reviews

1. Navigate to the Reviews tab of your business page.
2. Click the three horizontal dots in the upper right-hand corner of the review.
3. Click “Give feedback on this recommendation.”

Alternatively, you can simply click on the word bubble with the exclamation point.

Facebook will ask you “What’s going on,” and you’ll need to select one of the following choices:

• Recommendation Not Relevant (used for fake and/or irrelevant reviews)
• Unfair Recommendation (used for suspected paid reviews)
• Nudity, Violence, Harassment, Suicide or Self-Injury, Spam, Drugs and Hate Speech.

Select the most suitable reason and provide more details if asked to do so. Here’s what the popup looks like:

Once you’ve done this, all that’s left to do is wait. Unfortunately, there’s no concrete amount of time for how long it will take to determine the fate of the review. The only reports guaranteed to be resolved in a timely manner are those that contain threats or other illegal content. You will be notified as to whether the review will be taken down or not once the reporting process has been completed.

How to remove a bad review on facebook

Unfortunately, you can’t remove reviews from Facebook that someone else wrote if they’re truthful. Your only hope of getting them taken down is to fix the situation through diplomacy or stellar customer service. If you’re able to make amends with the customer, they may delete their own review for you.

In cases where you can’t fix the problem, you should at least respond to the customer complaint to tell your side of the story.

Advice for responding to negative Facebook reviews

If your business did something to garner a negative review, follow the proper etiquette to win back the customer’s trust. If you handle the situation gracefully, your customer might even delete the original review. At the very least, you should “like” the review. But if you want a chance at winning back their patronage, you’ll need to respond.

Acknowledge their disappointment or anger, offer a heartfelt apology. Then take action to make the situation right. Try to see the review as a chance for you to increase your transparency on social media and show off your excellent customer service.

How to handle bad star ratings

Star-only ratings still appear on Facebook business pages even though they’re no longer accepted. That’s bad news for businesses because only feedback that includes a comment can be reported. Since you can’t remove fake Facebook reviews that don’t have comments, the best way to handle bad star reviews is, again, to respond.

Ask the person who posted the rating to tell you how you could improve your business. Even if they don’t respond, this at least shows the other users scrolling down your page that you’re willing to go above and beyond to refine your customer experience.

How to remove all reviews on your Facebook page

I know what you’re thinking…

Why would anyone want to remove positive reviews from their Facebook page? Because that’s the fastest and easiest way to hide bad Facebook reviews that could damage your reputation.

Let’s face it; sometimes a business goes through a rough patch. Maybe a defective product was recalled, or a store manager consistently provided terrible customer service. Meanwhile, angry customers flooded your Facebook page with piles of authentic one-star online reviews.

But you took action and fixed everything that was wrong. Your products are top-notch and customer service has never been better. Maybe you even received a few positive reviews. Yet, the negative comments just won’t go away and they’re ruining your brand reputation.

While it’s always best to remove inappropriate reviews when possible, this process can take a while. Small businesses may not be able to wait for them to be taken down. If that’s the case, your best course of action may be to simply turn off Recommendations entirely.

Follow these steps to remove reviews from Facebook

1. From your Facebook business page, click “Settings.”
2. Select “Templates and Tabs.”

   

3. Scroll down to find “Reviews” and click the “Settings” button.
4. Toggle off “Show Reviews” and click “Save.”

   

It’s important to note that turning off Recommendations won’t delete Facebook reviews, it just hides them. That means if you decide to turn them back on again, all the negative ones will return.

How to delete a review you wrote on Facebook

Luckily it’s super easy to remove a review from Facebook if you wrote it. Just find the review in question, click the three horizontal dots in the top right and select “Delete.” If you’d like to edit your review instead, click “Edit Review.” If only everything else in life were so simple.

Check other review sites

Even when you’re doing everything right, things can still go wrong. Therefor you should constantly monitor all online review platforms for trouble. If you’ve got issues with Facebook, you may also need to:

• Remove Google reviews
• Get rid of Yelp complaints
• Address criticism on Ripoff Report

Push down negative results

Undesirable reviews are often part of doing business. In most cases, complaints are legitimate, and you won’t be able to remove them. That means you’ll need to invest in reputation management to handle them. This post explains how to push down negative search results.