5 stars, 2 stars, 0 stars. For more than a hundred years, we’ve been ranking businesses with a star ranking system. “It’s a 5 star hotel, we have to go!” or “Eh, it’s only 3 stars. I’d rather skip out.” We chose businesses entirely on their stars and that’s about to change. Facebook has decided to make it simpler for people to interact with local businesses with recommendations. The recent switch will help people discover new services, places or events based upon their friends’ recommendations.

What should you expect with the new recommendation system? Simplified, it’s giving consumers more freedom to express how they feel about a certain business.

Facebook now asks consumers if they want to leave a recommendation about your business or not instead of just ranking you with stars. Somebody may ask a question like “Where’s a great dealership to buy a new Ford?” on their timeline or a Facebook group, and your friends have the power to reply with recommendations. The recommendations will show to their friends, but also show on your dealership’s page.

Local Reach Recommendations will help you attract more local customers. Facebook collects recommendations from individual timelines and combines them with recommendations left on your dealership’s Facebook page. Any recommendation made by a user’s friends will be auto-sorted to show at the top of the list.

A recommendation must be at least 25 characters, so users have to provide a reason for their recommendation.

Multimedia/GIFs Have you ever had the perfect gif to explain your experience at a local business but weren’t able to share it? Well, now you can. If you tag a business in the comment section when your friend asks for a recommendation, you have the option to post photos or gifs.

If consumers are leaving a recommendation in their standard Facebook feed, either on their own, or as a response to a friend, that recommendation can show up on your page – depending on how the recommendation is shared.

Specific Sharing When somebody decides to share a recommendation about your business, it doesn’t automatically show up on your dealership’s page. It only “counts” for your dealership if the recommendation is shared publicly and your dealership is tagged.

As for the old ranking system, don’t say goodbye to it just yet.

Old Reviews Don’t worry, your old reviews are still here and still count toward your overall review score. However, you can’t filter by best or worst reviews – only most helpful or most recent.

As we find out more about how the new recommendation system works, we’ll come back with updates in future videos to keep you in the loop. If you’re curious, you can watch Greg’s Wednesday Workshop video dealing with Facebook reviews and this new system.

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Greg Gifford is the Vice President of Search at Happy Hao Car. He has over 16 years of online marketing and web design experience, and has specialized in automotive SEO for the last 8 years, helping hundreds of auto dealers thrive while the industry has struggled during the recession. Greg speaks internationally at both automotive and SEO conferences, teaching thousands of small business owners and marketers how to get their sites to show up higher in local search rankings. Greg also spends his spare time doing freelance website design and SEO for local businesses. He graduated from Southern Methodist University with a BA in Cinema and Communications, and has an obscure movie quote for just about any situation.

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