Customer reviews on Facebook help your business earn brownie points and win more potential customers. But just like any other platform, getting bad reviews can also damage your brand‘s credibility. In fact, research suggests that 68% of potential customers form an opinion after reading between one and six online reviews. You can only imagine the consequences for your brand if it becomes a victim of review bombing, with trolls purposely posting bad feedback.
That’s why we’ve created this guide, where we’ll show you how to remove reviews from Facebook to preserve your online reputation.
The Top-Rated Online Reputation Management Companies to Remove Reviews From Facebook
Social proof is an incredibly powerful tool. The general opinion your customers share about your business significantly impacts your company’s online image and reputation, for better or worse. Luckily, online reputation management services work both ways: help you build a strong positive brand image and repair a damaged one.
The following are our top picks:
- WebiMax — Best for small businesses that need a hands-on solution
- NetReputation — Best for ultra-responsive customer support
- InternetReputation.com — Best for personal reputation management
- Reputation Defense Network — Best for permanently removing false content
- Podium — Best for getting reviews automatically
- SEO Image — Best for legal and medical practices
- Gadook — Best for rebranding after reputation attacks
- BirdEye — Best for getting Google and Facebook reviews
- Reputation.com — Best for knowing your competition’s reputation
- Go Fish Digital — Best for improving Yelp reviews
- Netmark.com — Best for hands-off, fast responses to reputation hits
You can read our full reviews for each online reputation management company here.
What Are Facebook Reviews?
Facebook reviews are feedback from customers posted to your business’s Facebook page. These reviews can just be ratings or ratings with recommendations; short or go more in-depth.
82% of consumers read online reviews before making local purchasing decisions. Good Facebook reviews indicate past customers have had a positive experience with your brand, influencing potential customers to do business with you, and vice versa.
The problem arises when you get fake reviews or spam reviews meant to discredit your business on purpose through coordinated campaigns of social media marketing or review bombing. Just do a Google search for “Buy negative Facebook reviews” and you’ll see several dozens of companies selling negative reviews.
The Basics of Removing Reviews From Facebook
Facebook for business is a blessing and a curse. With over 2.9 billion people using the platform, you get exposure like no other—but you’ll also find yourself dealing with inappropriate or unfair feedback.
Let’s take a look at how you can tackle this issue.
Understanding Whether a Review on Facebook Is Fake
Before we discuss deleting or removing Facebook reviews, you need to identify whether a customer review is fake in the first place.
For starters, it’s helpful to maintain a customer database and transactional records to cross-check a negative review from a customer. Does the negative review match or closely resemble an existing customer? Do you have a customer complaint on the file matching the events recounted in the review?
If it does, the review is genuine, and you should work on resolving it with tact. But if the review doesn’t align with any of your business records, it’s fake.
Here are a few common red flags to easily spot a fake Facebook review:
- The account has one of those typical fake names. Think: John Retartagan, Patty O’Furniture, Olive Yew
- The account is created on the same day as the day of the review—and for the sole purpose of giving your business a bad review
- The account profile picture is copied from somewhere else
- The account is connected to a competitor or a former employee
- The posted review has an inaccurate description of your business’s product or service is filled with silly grammatical errors or recommends your competitor in the complaint
Unfortunately, removing fake Facebook reviews isn’t as easy as you might hope.
Deleting Reviews From Facebook Isn’t Possible
Can you remove or delete Facebook reviews? No, you cannot delete a legitimate review on Facebook, however malicious.
This is because of Facebook’s policy to provide a trustworthy and transparent review system to its users. If it allowed businesses to tamper with reviews, people would lose their trust in Facebook and no longer see it as a reliable source of information.
But Facebook doesn’t extend the same courtesy to fake reviews made from shady and fake accounts. If the review is flagrant and/or in obvious violation of its community standards, Facebook will remove it.
In other cases, Facebook is unlikely to take down a Facebook recommendation. The scathing and unfair review will stay connected to your page unless you take a few remedial and preventive actions.
Reporting a Review on Facebook
If the Facebook review goes against Facebook‘s Community Standards, you can flag it. To do this, the review should either be clearly fake or contain one or more of the following prohibited forms of speech:
- Bullying
- Hate speech
- Misrepresentation
- Cruelness and insensitivity
Facebook‘s Community Standards are broad, but the platform is quick to remove a Facebook recommendation if it’s ingenuine or overly offensive.
You can report a review on Facebook by following these steps:
- Log into your Facebook business page.
- Click on the Reviews tab on the top menu bar. Go to the review you want to report.
- Click on the three dots on the top right hand of the review.
- Select Report post from the displayed options. A pop-up window will appear on your screen.
- Select the most appropriate description from the displayed list, and follow the prompts to finish the process.
After reporting a Facebook recommendation, all you can do is wait. Facebook will review your request, and if it finds the review goes against its Community Standards, it’ll remove the review forever.
Respond to Your Real Negative Facebook Reviews
89% of consumers are likely to use a business that responds to all reviews. So if legitimate customers have left bad Facebook recommendations, you need to respond positively and promptly as part of customer service.
Start with an apology and address the matter at hand, followed by offering a viable solution moving forward. If you do this right, you can change your customer’s negative experience into a positive one. It’ll also show potential customers your company cares about its customers and is serious about helping them.
Keep the following in mind when you respond to:
- Be sympathetic and non-confrontational
- Try to respond to recommendations promptly
- Keep your response short, sweet, and concise
Here’s an example of how responding to negative reviews professionally and tactfully can actually work in your favor:
Make sure customers are happy with your suggestion and reassure all customers that if things go wrong, you’ve always got their back.
Turning Off or Disabling Facebook Reviews
If you feel a negative review is hurting your business—or don’t want to deal with the trouble of worrying about bad or fake reviews, you can take a more extreme measure: disable Facebook recommendations entirely.
To be clear, turning off the review section will hide all the recommendations left by past customers, both positive and negative. This also doesn’t give you a clean slate—you’ll see all reviews again upon enabling Facebook reviews in the future. Still, this is an excellent option if you have several fake reviews.
Here are the steps to disable reviews from Facebook:
- Open your business page, making sure you’re logged in as the page admin.
- Click on Settings at the top right of the page.
- Navigate to the left-hand side of the page, and select Templates and Tab from the menu.
- Scroll down to Reviews, and click on Settings.
- To the right of the Show Reviews option, you’ll see a slider. Click on it to disable it.
- Select Save to confirm your new settings.
Now, customers can no longer see any negative feedback on your business’s Facebook page.
3 Tools to Remove Reviews From Facebook
Managing your online reputation is important, regardless of your business size and industry. Below, we’ve put together a list of three amazing online reputation management companies that can help you manage negative reviews on Facebook.
WebiMax
WebiMax is an excellent online reputation management company that offers hands-on review management solutions.
You can rely on it to bury negative feedback on Facebook and create a positive image for your brand without breaking the bank. Besides reputation management, WebiMax also offers review acquisition, social media marketing, and public relations.
The company assigns you dedicated campaign managers who create custom strategies to suit your needs. Plus, the whole process is covered under a non-disclosure agreement. No one else will know you’re using a third-party service to repair your online reputation.
BirdEye
BirdEye offers a wide range of reputation management solutions, but it’s the integrations with Facebook and Google that set it apart.
With BirdEye, you can auto-send review requests, respond to customer reviews on Facebook and other sites, and gather actionable insights with Natural language Processing (NLP). Review monitoring and management, review generation, and review marketing are the other desirable features.
You can also build a custom profile that can be beneficial to generate awareness and get more customers to check out your products and services. The fact that all these services are available on a single platform makes things even more convenient.
NetReputation
From removing negative comments from Facebook to improving brand visibility, NetReputation is one of the most comprehensive online reputation management companies.
It offers a full range of services, including reputation monitoring, review management, public relations, branding, and content removal. We also like how professional and responsive the company’s customer support is. To provide the best possible customer service, NetReputation thoroughly interviews business owners to understand their needs.
If you’re feeling the heat from poor Facebook reviews, you can always turn to NetReputation to help you clean up and achieve a shining reputation.
3 Tricks for Removing Reviews from Facebook
Let’s look at a few tricks and strategies that will help you handle reviews on Facebook better.
Don’t Retaliate Emotionally
We get it: fake reviews can be upsetting. But don’t let your emotions get the best of you. Not only will this behavior not solve your problem, but it may also put your brand in a negative light.
Have trust in your business, and work on offering solid and high-quality products and services that consistently yield positive reviews. Don’t lower your ethical standards just because somebody else decides to play dirty.
Get More Positive Reviews
There’s nothing better to offset fake or bad reviews than attracting more positive ones.
Reach out to customers you know have had a positive experience with your brand, and politely ask them to drop in a good word for you on Facebook. You can also offer them incentives like exclusive discounts or free goodies to make them more likely to turn the odds in your favor.
Bring In a Reputation Management Service
Take control of your reputation and protect your online reputation by working with a reliable reputation management company.
Using its expertise, a reputation management company can build an effective online reputation management strategy for your business. It can help remove fake Facebook reviews by overcoming roadblocks in Facebook‘s reporting process—and if it can’t, the service can suppress fake reviews effectively to hide them from the eyes of prospective customers.
What to Do Next
Now that you know how to remove reviews from Facebook, it’s time to focus on building a sound social media marketing strategy.
Admittedly, social media marketing isn’t easy. You have to spend time learning how to do it right. Luckily, there are a few strategies and techniques to make data-based decisions, steering your business towards success. When done properly, you can get more traffic for your business, score more positive reviews, and improve conversion rates.
Here are a few Quicksprout guides to help you get started on the right track:
- How to Effectively Market Your Small Business on Social Media
- The Beginner’s Guide to Online Marketing
- The Beginner’s Guide to the Best Strategies to Manage Your Online Reputation
- 16 Best Social Media Management Tools
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