Removing reviews from Facebook is a difficult and time-consuming process, mostly because you, as a business owner, cannot delete reviews from your own page.
Your options include convincing Meta to delete fake reviews, turning reviews off on your page and boosting your reputation to suppress negative reviews.
In this post, I cover how to remove reviews from Facebook and what to do if you can’t.
Can You Remove Facebook Reviews from Your Page?
No. You cannot delete Facebook reviews (called “recommendations” on Facebook) you didn’t write.
This is a standard practice on review sites. Preventing businesses from manipulating ratings and suppressing negative opinions helps these platforms maintain consumer-friendly spaces for sharing opinions.
But more importantly than that, it’s actually illegal for businesses to delete reviews thanks to rules and regulations made by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
This includes Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prevents businesses from engaging in review suppression, and the Consumer Review Fairness Act, which prohibits businesses from creating contracts that restrict customers from leaving negative reviews and punishes them for doing so.
Therefore, it’s against the law for platforms like Google, Facebook and Yelp to allow businesses to delete customer reviews.
Reporting Fake and Inappropriate Reviews
Fortunately, the FTC does allow businesses to remove reviews that contain:
- Private information
- False statements
- Harassing or abusive language
- Vulgar language
- Offensive language
- Sexually-explicit content
- Content that’s unrelated to the business’ products and services
However, because businesses are not allowed to delete reviews themselves, they must request that review platforms do so on their behalf.
Facebook requires a review to be in violation of their Community Standards in order to be eligible for removal.
Most reviews that will be eligible for removal are reviews that contain harmful content or obvious spam.
The Community Standards page has a long list of prohibited content that mirrors content the FTC says makes reviews eligible for removal.
It’s a lot more precise and prohibits:
- Coordinating harm and promoting crime
- Dangerous organizations and individuals
- Prohibited commercial practices
- Restricted goods and services
- Violence and incitement
- Adult sexual exploitation
- Bullying and harassment
- Child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity
- Human exploitation
- Suicide, self-injury and eating disorders
- Adult nudity and sexual activity
- Adult sexual solicitation and sexually-explicit language
- Hateful content
- Privacy violations
- Violent and graphic content
- Account integrity
- Authentic identity representation
- Cybersecurity
- Inauthentic behavior
- Memorialization
- Misinformation
- Spam
- Third-party intellectual property infringement
- Using Meta intellectual property and licenses
- Locally illegal content, products or services
- User requests
This list is important because it goes well beyond vague descriptors like “harmful language” or “spam.” By including things like “account integrity,” “cybersecurity” and “user requests,” Meta gives you more reasons to report negative reviews that are eligible for removal.
How to Report a Review On Facebook
- Open the Reviews section of your Facebook business page.
- Find the review you want to report.
- Click on the review’s three-dot menu.
- Select Report Post.
- Follow the on-screen instructions for reporting the review, including choosing how the review violates the Community Standards guidelines.
The process is simple, but unfortunately, Facebook’s reporting system is hit or miss.
Sometimes you’ll receive an error message when you try to report a review. Other times the form will be missing, and the only thing you can report a review for is nudity or sexual content.
Quick fixes might solve the issue, such as clearing your browser’s cache, disabling adblock or trying to report the review from a different type of device (like trying the mobile app instead of the desktop site, or vice versa).
If you have a Meta business account, try opening up a support case about removing the review.
Waiting for Facebook to Remove Reviews
Facebook uses AI to detect and mass delete content that goes against its Community Standards. The company explains how “AI can detect and remove content that goes against our Community Standards before anyone reports it.”
They go on to explain how they have a team of thousands of human reviewers located around the world who are in charge of reviewing potentially inappropriate content that was flagged by the company’s AI detection system.
Source: Facebook
They use decisions made by human reviewers to better train AI.
If you’re dealing with a review that’s obviously fake or harmful, you might just need to wait for Facebook’s detection system to remove it.
The hard part is convincing Facebook to remove a review that’s made to look real but you know isn’t (based on customer history and other factors).
Should You Turn Reviews Off On Facebook?
Your instinct might be to disable reviews on your Facebook page altogether, especially if you receive a lot of spam or fake reviews.
However, turning reviews off can do more harm than good.
Customers will be less likely to trust your business and view it as authentic if you don’t have reviews. This is because reviews are a form of social proof, meaning other customers will be more likely to buy from you if they read recent reviews from customers that praise you.
You can’t give this kind of experience to customers if you disable reviews altogether.
What to Do If You Can’t Remove a Review from Facebook
Leave it, but put in the work to reduce its influence.
The best way to deal with a bad review on your page is to respond to it, even if it’s likely fake. That way if a customer sees the review, or a “doesn’t recommend” testimonial as it’s called on Facebook, they also see your reply denouncing it.
It’s best to be professional in your response to avoid putting off potential customers.
To be clear, this only applies to reviews other customers might not be able to recognize as fake. If a review contains offensive or vulgar language but doesn’t make any claims about your business, it’ll likely be ignored by customers, anyway, so there’s no point in taking the time to respond to it.
But if you spot a review written by a customer you don’t recognize, reply with something simple like, “My staff is having a hard time placing this transaction. Can you let me know when you visited our business?”
The other type of “fake” review you should reply to are negative reviews that make false or misleading claims but are written by real customers.
This type of review is tricky to reply to and will generally come down to a he said, she said outcome where customers are able to determine for themselves who they want to believe.
Again, be professional at all costs. While you may be in the right, being catty is not a good look to customers who are checking out your business for the first time.
Just state the facts, and give customers more context about what really happened with a particular transaction.
Take this review on Google by the owner of Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago.
A customer had a complaint about pricing, leading them to leave a 3-star review.
The bookstore’s response gently explained how they sell their products at MSRP and that retail prices set by larger bookstores can cause a lot of confusion about what prices for certain books should be.
Get More Reviews
The other way to handle negative reviews you can’t remove on Facebook is to get more Facebook recommendations.
Facebook displays reviews by recency and has no way for customers to sort reviews themselves. So, the more positive reviews you receive, the further negative reviews will fall.
Positive reviews also help raise your overall rating, so the more positive reviews you receive, the less impact negative reviews from the past will have.
The most effective way to get more reviews on Facebook is to ask for them.
All you need to do is share your review link with every customer you encounter. Just go to your review page on Facebook to copy it. It should be facebook.com/pagename/reviews, such as facebook.com/unabridgedbookstore/reviews.
Then, share it in the following locations:
- QR code
- in-person handouts
- packaging inserts
- product packaging
- signage
- Marketing SMS messages
- Marketing emails
For emails, you can generate reviews automatically with a review funnel that sends review requests to customers through email automations.
If you want to increase the number of reviews you receive on Facebook naturally, improve your products, services and customer service. Also, improve the customer experience so customers will actually want to leave reviews without being prompted.
According to a survey conducted by BrightLocal, the number one reason customers don’t leave reviews is because the experience wasn’t noteworthy enough.
You should also post more on Facebook to increase your influence on the platform.
Hire an Online Reputation Management Service
Small businesses do not have the resources to pilot a review marketing strategy for multiple platforms.
If this describes your business, consider hiring a reputation management service on a one-off or ongoing basis.
They’ll handle tasks like:
- Review monitoring
- Responding to online reviews
- General review generation
- Targeted review generation campaigns
Most reputation management services conduct brand reputation audits and competitive analyses, allowing them to create an actionable plan for improving your ratings across multiple review platforms.
It’s a great resource to have if you’re struggling with managing reviews on your own.
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