You cannot remove a review from a Facebook Page yourself. A recommendation is a post the customer owns, and Meta takes one down only when it breaks the Community Standards, so reporting it is the one removal route Meta documents for a Page owner. What you get to decide is whether the review is reportable at all, whether Recommendations stay switched on for the whole Page, and what your public reply says to the next person who reads it.

Every quotation below is Meta's own wording, read off its help pages on 6 September 2026.

Can you delete a Facebook review?

No, and the reason is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on it.

Turning Recommendations on "lets anyone logged into Facebook publish a Recommendation on your Page", in Meta's words, and nothing in that flow checks whether the person bought anything. Meta says so on the page explaining how the review count and recommendation score work: "We do not verify that users purchased the product or used the service they are reviewing or recommending on Pages on Facebook."

That sentence explains most declined reports. A review can be untrue, written by somebody who has never walked in, posted by a competitor's cousin, and none of that breaks a rule by itself. The Community Standards cover harassment and spam. They do not cover being wrong about you.

Two people can make a recommendation disappear, and you are not one of them.

The first is the customer who wrote it. A recommendation is an ordinary post, so its author can delete it like anything else they have posted, and Meta documents an Edit privacy control for changing who sees it afterwards. Only public recommendations feed your rating, so a customer switching theirs to Friends has the same effect on your score as deleting it.

The second is Meta. It removes recommendations that break the Community Standards, and separately removes reviews that break its spam policies: "when spam reviews are removed, the rating of a Page may change". Nobody tells you when that happens, which is one reason review counts move on their own.

Work out which kind of review you have first

Facebook uses the word review for four different things, and only one of them has the report path most guides describe.

The second row catches owners out, and it is on Meta's report a Recommendation page today: a bare one-star with nothing written under it has no report flow at all. What to do about one is further down. Where each of these systems shows its numbers is in the complete guide to Facebook reviews.

How to remove a review from a Facebook Page: the report path

Reporting is the only route Meta gives a Page owner to remove a Facebook recommendation. Meta's steps:

1. Click Reviews under Details below the Page cover photo.
2. Tap See all next to Recent reviews.
3. Click Options in the top right corner of the post you want to report.
4. Select Report post.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions.

What Meta says happens next is one line: "We'll review your report and may remove Recommendations that don't follow our standards." There is no case number, no published turnaround and no appeal form. You find out by looking at your Page.

The ads-linked reviews get a better tool. Report one from Ratings and reviews in Meta Business Suite and Meta says the review "will still be publicly visible" while it assesses it, with the Status column moving from Published to Pending. Page recommendations have no such column.

What makes a report worth filing

Meta judges the post against the Community Standards rather than against fairness, so the useful question is not whether the review is true but which rule it breaks. A report has a real chance when the post is abusive, hateful, obviously spam, plainly about a different business, or part of a burst from accounts with no history. It has almost none when the complaint is a bad experience described unfairly.

Build the evidence anyway. Screenshot the review with the reviewer's name and the date visible, search your booking system for that name across the dates described, and paste the review's own text into a search engine in quotation marks. The full method is in how to spot a fake review.

One rule works in your favour and almost nobody quotes it. Meta tells reviewers: "You should not leave a recommendation for a business if you help manage its Page." A competitor recommending their own Page breaks that, and so does a launch built on staff and family.

What to do about a rating with no text

This is the real gap in Meta's system. A silent one-star counts towards your score, cannot be reported, and gives you nothing to reply to.

Wait a few days before you do anything else. Meta says Page reviews that violate its spam policies "will be removed", with no report from you required, and that a Page's rating can change when they are. A coordinated run of ratings from thin accounts is the pattern that catches.

Blocking the profile stops the next one rather than fixing this one. Meta's blocking article lists what it does: the blocked profile can no longer see what you post, tag your Page, message it, or find it in search. Nothing already posted comes down. Steps are in how to ban someone from your Facebook business Page.

Then dilute it. Your rating is a share of public recommendations, so one hostile rating in thirty moves the number and the same rating in three hundred does not. Meta says a Page "may not have a rating if it hasn't received at least 5 reviews", so a young Page is fragile in a way an established one is not. Asking every customer is the only defence that works before the fact.

Hiding reviews on your Facebook Page: what it costs

Almost every page ranking for this query ends at the toggle. Meta's own description of the switch is the reason to stop there and think: "Turning Recommendations off will disable Recommendations and remove the rating and reviews from your Page."

Not the review. The rating and the reviews. All of them, including the eighty good ones you spent two years collecting. The Reviews tab goes with them, so a customer comparing you against two competitors sees two Pages with recommendations and one with none.

The toggle sits under Page and tagging, which is not where anyone expects to find reviews. Most older guides still describe the pre-redesign path, so use the current one in the Facebook reviews guide.

Meta is silent on what happens when you switch it back on. Its help page says only that the toggle removes the rating and reviews. It does note that Pages which previously had reviews had Recommendations turned on for them automatically, which suggests the history survives, but a suggestion is not a guarantee, and this is not a setting to test on a Page you care about.

The one defensible use is a Page under a coordinated attack: off for a week while Meta's spam enforcement catches up, then back on. Anything longer is not review management, it is running a business without social proof.

Reply instead, which is the option most owners skip

A reply is available now, costs nothing, and is read by everyone who arrives after it. A report may never be actioned and is read by nobody.

Reply as the Page rather than as yourself, which means checking the byline on the comment box before you type. Answer the specific complaint, keep it to four lines, and move the detail to a private channel. If you believe the review is invented, say you cannot find a record of the visit and offer a way to reach you.

Do not accuse the reviewer of lying in public, and that is a legal point rather than a manners one: the FTC's review rule bars a business from making a false accusation about a reviewer when it knows the accusation is false or is reckless about whether it is. The mechanics of replying are in the reply section of the Facebook guide; the wording to borrow is in our review response examples.

When a run of one-stars arrives with a demand for money

A burst of one-stars lands overnight from accounts with no history, and a day or two later a message arrives by email or Instagram DM offering to make them go away for a fee.

Do not pay and do not reply. Paying marks your Page as a business that pays, and nothing is removed by the transaction. Keep the message with the sender's address and the timestamps visible, report the recommendations through the flow above, and take it to your local police or consumer regulator. Google runs a dedicated extortion form for exactly this. Meta publishes no dedicated form that I could find in its help centre, so on a Facebook Page the ordinary report path is what you have.

For help separating a policy breach from an opinion you simply dislike, read how to spot a fake review. If the review is on Google instead, use the Google removal process.

When you run more than one Facebook Page

Everything above is per Page, and that is where a network gets caught out. Recommendations are a Page setting with no bulk control, so switching them off is a decision made and reversed one Page at a time. Blocking is per Page as well, and Meta says so plainly: "When you block a profile or Page, you only block it from your Page." Someone banned from your Newcastle Page can still post on the other eleven. And a duplicate Page for one of your sites collects recommendations nobody can report until somebody claims it.

The practical version is a list: every Page, its Reviews tab URL, whether Recommendations are on, and who replies. In Cloutly, reviews from Facebook and the other 38 sites it reads land in one inbox across every location, so a recommendation on the quietest Page is not something a person has to remember to check. The wider playbook is on our multi-location page.

Frequently asked questions

How do I hide reviews on my Facebook Page?

There is no per-review hide. The only control is the Allow others to view and leave reviews on your Page? toggle under Page and tagging, and Meta says turning it off removes the rating and reviews from your Page, not just the one you dislike.

Why can't I report a one-star review on Facebook?

Because it has no text. Meta's rule is explicit: "Recommendations that only include a star rating can't be reported." Its own spam enforcement is the only thing that removes those.

How long does Facebook take to remove a reported review?

Meta publishes no timeframe for Page recommendations and sends no confirmation, so check the Page rather than waiting for an email. The Business Suite tool for ads-linked reviews is the only one that shows a status, and it moves from Published to Pending while the report is assessed.

Facebook reviews for business are called Recommendations. A customer answers yes or no to "Do you recommend this business?", writes a short post, and your Page shows the share of people who said yes next to the number of reviews behind it. Recommendations are off until someone switches them on, and Meta says a Page may not have a rating at all until it has received at least five reviews.

That is the whole model, and most guides ranking for this topic still describe a Page layout Facebook retired years ago. I checked everything below on 6 September 2026 against Meta's current help pages, its developer docs, the FTC's own rule guidance and a live Facebook Page.

Facebook reviews vs Facebook Recommendations

There is no difference. Meta uses both words for the same feature, sometimes in the same sentence. The toggle in your Page settings says reviews, the button a customer taps says recommend, the tab on your Page is called Reviews, and the help article is called Turn Recommendations on or off for your business Page.

What changed is the shape of the answer. There is no five-star selector on a Page any more. A customer picks Yes or No, writes something, and chooses who can see it. Your Page then shows a percentage and a count, so it might read "82% recommend (214 reviews)" where it once read "4.6 stars".

The name matters less than two practical details.

Only public recommendations count. A customer who chooses Friends as the audience leaves a recommendation their friends can see and that never touches your score. Meta is explicit: "Only recommendations that are shared publicly are included in a Page's overall rating." Public ones carry a globe icon next to the date.

Your review count is not one number. Meta says the count "may fluctuate" depending on who is looking, because a viewer inside a reviewer's chosen audience sees that review and other viewers do not. Switch into your Page as an admin and the count you see is the public one.

There is also a second, separate thing called reviews on Facebook. If you run Meta ads, Meta may ask customers who bought after seeing one to rate their purchase experience. Those ratings live in the ads experience and in a Ratings and reviews tool inside Meta Business Suite, not on your Reviews tab. Two systems, one word. Most guides do not mention the second at all.

Why Facebook reviews for business matter, and how much

Honestly: for most service businesses, less than Google. Facebook recommendations never show up in Google's local pack or on Google Maps, which is where a plumber, a clinic or a salon gets found. Finish the Google reviews playbook, and the Business Profile it runs on, before anyone spends a week on Facebook.

The numbers back that ordering without erasing Facebook. BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, a panel of 1,002 US consumers, found 34% had left a Facebook review in the past year, against 45% for Google and 24% for Yelp. Second, ahead of Yelp, is not nothing.

Facebook is worth real effort in four cases.

• Your customers live in local Facebook groups. Trades, childcare, pet care, gyms and community venues get a steady flow of "can anyone recommend a..." posts. A Page with 200 recommendations wins those threads; a Page with none is invisible in them.
• You run Meta ads. Meta says business ratings and reviews "will be visible within the ads experience", so a rating sits next to the ad you are paying for.
• You are a venue. Restaurants, pubs, function spaces and attractions collect Facebook recommendations without asking, because people post about going out.
• Your Page outranks your website. For plenty of small businesses the Page is the first or second result for the business name, so whatever is on it is the first impression.

If none of those describe you, switch Recommendations on, reply to what arrives, and spend the rest of your time on Google.

How to turn Facebook Recommendations on (and off)

This is the step every old guide gets wrong, because it describes the pre-2022 Page layout with a left-hand settings column and a Templates and Tabs screen. Neither exists now. The current path, from Meta's help article:

1. Log into Facebook, then click your profile photo in the top right.
2. Click See all profiles, then select the Page you want to switch into.
3. Click your Page's profile photo in the top right.
4. Click Settings & privacy, then Settings.
5. Click Page and tagging.
6. Toggle Allow others to view and leave reviews on your Page? on or off.

The setting sits under Page and tagging, which is not where anyone expects reviews to be, so use the search box in Settings if the menu has moved again by the time you read this. If your Page had reviews before the change, Meta says Recommendations were turned on for it automatically. Once they are, the reviews sit on a Reviews tab below your cover photo, and Meta notes you may have to select More to find it.

Turning it off is the same toggle. Meta is clear about the consequence: "Turning Recommendations off will disable Recommendations and remove the rating and reviews from your Page." It hides the whole tab, not the one review you dislike. There is a section on that below.

Meta makes one claim for the feature: Recommendations "help customers learn more about your business and may make your Page easier to find in Facebook search". Note the "may". Treat any guide promising a Facebook ranking boost with suspicion, and ignore anyone who tells you Facebook recommendations lift your Google ranking. There is no evidence they do. Google ranks on its own signals, and Google reviews are the ones that feed them.

How to get more Facebook reviews

The mechanics are the same as any other review site, with one wrinkle: the customer has to be logged into Facebook, on Facebook, to leave one. That is a bigger ask than a Google link.

1. Turn Recommendations on first. Asking for reviews on a Page that cannot accept them is the most common wasted campaign there is. Load your own Page's /reviews URL in a private window and check that the Yes and No buttons render.
2. Ask soon after the job. Same day if you can. The specifics a good recommendation needs, the name of the person who helped and what got fixed, fade within a week.
3. Ask everyone, not the ones you expect to be kind. Screening customers by how they feel before you decide who gets the link is review gating. It is the fastest route to a rating nobody believes, and where it shades into offering something for a good review it is now unlawful in the US. The Meta and FTC rules are set out below.
4. Send one link, not instructions. "Leave us a review on Facebook" makes the customer go and find the Page. A link straight to your Reviews tab does not.
5. Ask by text or email, not only in person. An ask at the counter converts far worse than a message the customer can act on later, and it depends on somebody remembering.
6. Reply to the ones you get. Public replies are the cheapest signal you have that a person reads this Page.

If Facebook is your second priority behind Google, send everyone to Google and add a Facebook ask for the segment that already engages with your Page: people who message you, comment on your posts, or found you through a group. The pillar guide on getting more reviews covers timing and wording, and all of it transfers.

How to get your Facebook review link

Your Reviews tab has a direct URL:

https://www.facebook.com/YourPageUsername/reviews

Swap in the username from your Page's address. It opens the Reviews tab with the recommend buttons in view, which is as close to a one-tap ask as Facebook allows. Copy the address out of your own Page rather than assuming it: not every Page has a tidy username to type.

Test it in a private window first. If Recommendations are off, the URL renders "This content isn't available right now", which is exactly what a customer would see and what you would never otherwise find out.

How customers tag your business on Facebook

A recommendation is not the only way a customer's post reaches your Page. When someone types @ followed by your Page name in a post or a comment, Facebook turns it into a link to your Page. They can also tag your Page in photos, which Meta documents under Interact with Pages.

Tagged posts are where "can anyone recommend a..." threads get answered, so a tag is a recommendation in everything but format: it names you, it comes from a customer, and it reaches people who were already asking. You cannot make customers do it, but you can make it easy. Spell the Page name the same way everywhere, so the autocomplete finds it and it matches your signage. Then reply from the Page when a tag arrives. A tagged post with a reply reads as a live business; the same post ignored for three weeks reads as a closed one.

What you cannot do: Meta's rules and the FTC's

Two sets of rules apply, and they overlap.

Meta's. Its guidance to reviewers is short: focus on the product or service, base the recommendation on personal experience, and "you should not leave a recommendation for a business if you help manage its Page". That last line rules out the staff-and-family launch strategy half the internet still recommends. Meta also says plainly that it does not verify whether a reviewer bought anything, which is why a sudden burst of recommendations from new accounts is a bad idea.

The FTC's. The Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, went into effect on 21 October 2024. It bans buying and selling fake reviews, bans compensation conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, and bans reviews by an officer, manager, employee or agent that do not disclose the connection. Courts can impose civil penalties for knowing violations, and in December 2025 the FTC sent warning letters to companies over incentives for five-star reviews, noting that penalties reach $53,088 per violation. If you sell into the United States it applies to you whichever platform the review sits on.

The FTC's own question and answer page is more precise than most of the advice written about it. Incentives are not banned outright: "The rule does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn't an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment." Paying for five-star reviews is out even if the reviewer discloses the payment, and the FTC answers that one with a flat No. Failing to disclose an incentive is a separate problem under the FTC Act.

So: ask anyone, remind them once, and if you offer something, offer the same thing whatever they write and say you offered it. More on how platforms catch the rest in how to spot fake reviews.

How to respond to Facebook reviews

A public recommendation is a post, so you reply the way you reply to any post: switch into your Page, open the Reviews tab, and comment as the Page rather than as yourself. Check the byline on the comment box first. Replying as your personal profile is the most common Facebook reply mistake and everyone can see it.

The purchase-experience reviews are the ones Meta routes through Business Suite. Its instructions: go to Meta Business Suite, click All tools, then under Manage click Ratings and reviews, then Respond in the Actions column, write the response and click Publish response. Meta checks the response against its Community Standards before it goes live, and you can edit or delete it afterwards from View response.

What to write is the same job on every platform: thank the specific thing, answer the specific complaint, keep it short, and move the argument to a private channel. The worked examples in our review response examples hub apply here unchanged.

If you already run review software for Google, check whether it covers Facebook properly before you add another tab to your day. In Cloutly, Facebook reviews and Messenger threads land in the same inbox as Google's across every location, and your hours, phone and address publish to the Facebook Page as well as to Google Business Profile through listings management.

How to hide, report or remove a Facebook review

You cannot delete a recommendation about your business. Meta's position on reviews generally is blunt: businesses "may reply to reviews, but they can't edit or remove reviews. Reviews are only removed if they go against our Community Standards." For Page recommendations the only two levers Meta documents are the report flow and the on/off toggle. That leaves three real options.

The middle option is the one to think hardest about. You lose every good review to hide one bad one, and a Page with no Reviews tab looks like a business that switched it off, because that is what it is. A week while you handle something serious is defensible. Leaving it off is a decision to run without social proof.

The third option is covered step by step in how to ban someone from your Facebook business Page, and if the same person is flooding your inbox, turning off Messenger for the Page is the blunter tool. The equivalent process on Google, which is the one most businesses need more often, is in how to remove negative Google reviews.

How to report a fake review on Facebook

Meta's steps for a Page recommendation:

1. Click Reviews under Details below the Page cover photo.
2. Tap See all next to Recent reviews.
3. Click Options in the top right corner of the post you want to report.
4. Select Report post.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Two limits are worth knowing before you spend an afternoon on it. Meta says "Recommendations that only include a star rating can't be reported", so a bare rating with no text has no report path. And a report is judged against Community Standards, not against whether the review is fair or whether the person was ever a customer. A detailed but untrue review from someone who never walked in usually survives. Something abusive, off-topic or obviously spam usually does not.

For the ads-linked reviews the report route is inside Business Suite: All tools, Ratings and reviews, then Report next to the Actions column. Meta says the review stays publicly visible while it is assessed, and the Status column changes from Published to Pending.

For the rating-only rule, what Meta does after you report, and what running more than one Page changes, see how to remove a review from a Facebook Page.

Why can't I see all my Facebook reviews?

This is the most searched Facebook reviews problem and it almost always has one of five causes.

• Recommendations are off. The tab and every review with it disappear from the Page. Check the toggle in Page and tagging.
• The review was not public. The reviewer chose Friends or a custom audience, or changed the audience after posting. It exists, their friends can see it, and it does not appear in your public count or your score.
• You are under five reviews. Meta says a Page may not have a rating until it has at least five.
• It was removed. Meta removes reviews that break Community Standards and reviews caught by its spam enforcement, and it says a Page's rating can change as a result.
• You are looking as the wrong identity. Switched into the Page as an admin you see the public count. Logged in as yourself you may see more, because you sit inside somebody's friends audience.

If the count moves and nothing else explains it, spam removal is the usual answer, and Meta does not notify you when it happens.

How to embed Facebook reviews on your website

There is no plugin that embeds your Reviews tab, and there never has been. Meta's Page plugin renders "timeline, events, messages" and nothing else. Meta also discontinued several of its older social plugins on 10 February 2026 and says in the social plugins FAQ that "no replacement plugins are being provided". The retired ones "gracefully degrade to invisible elements", a polite way of saying the box on your homepage may already be gone and nobody told you.

What you can do:

• Embed one public recommendation as a post. A recommendation is a post, and Meta's Embedded Posts plugin embeds public posts. Fine for a single strong review on a landing page, unworkable as a wall.
• Use a review widget that reads your Page. Third-party widgets pull the reviews through an integration and render them as HTML you control, which is also the only version that survives Meta changing its plugin lineup again.
• Screenshot it. Legitimate, and out of date the moment the review count moves.

Most businesses want a mixed wall rather than a Facebook-only one, and the practical guide to that is how to embed Google reviews.

How to leave a review on Facebook

Send this to a customer who asks how. From Meta's instructions:

1. Go to the business's Page.
2. Click Reviews.
3. Click Yes to recommend the Page, or No if you would not.
4. Select the audience for your review.
5. Write the recommendation.
6. Click Post.

Step 4 is the one to flag when you ask, because Public is the only setting that counts towards the rating. A customer who leaves the audience on Friends has written you a lovely review your Page will never show. It is recoverable: Meta lets a reviewer change the audience afterwards from the post's own Edit privacy option, so "would you mind switching it to Public?" is a real fix rather than a lost cause.

Facebook reviews across multiple locations

Everything above applies per Page, which is the difficulty when you run more than one site.

Every location needs its own toggle checked. Recommendations are a Page setting, not an account setting, and there is no bulk control. Thirty Pages is thirty checks. Do them once, in a spreadsheet, with each Page's /reviews URL in a column so anyone can re-test one in a click.

Every location needs its own review link. One link for the brand sends a customer in Geelong to review the Newcastle store, or to a Page nobody local manages. Build the per-Page URL for each site and put it in that site's follow-up message.

Decide who replies. Meta grants access Page by Page: its Business Suite reviews tool needs Facebook access to the Page, or task access to Community activity. Either the location manager replies and you accept variable quality, or head office replies and you accept a slower reply time. The failure mode is both sides assuming the other is doing it.

Deal with duplicate Pages before you start asking. Unofficial and place Pages get created for locations all the time, and recommendations sit on the Page they were left on. Two Pages for one site means a split count and a customer flipping a coin. Work out which Page you are pointing people at, and point everything there.

The broader playbook for running one review programme across many sites is on our multi-location reputation page.