A brand new feature on Facebook promises to increase the awareness of customers as well as assist business owners in their marketing strategy. The five-star rating system has been long established by the social networking website for Facebook company pages, but its recent strategic placement makes it possible for customers to easily rate the products and services as well as the customer service they have received from companies.

For now, millions of people are already using this brand new Facebook 5-star rating feature. This promising addition to Facebook company pages is very advantageous to customers in that they can make wiser purchasing decisions. With the high number of people relying on Facebook for online purchases and reviews, the popular review site, Yelp may soon face competition.

That is to say if Facebook decides to allow search engines to understand the markup of the business pages and optimizes each page to rank high for a particular business.  Only recently Facebook was utilizing rich snippets to structure aggregate review rating, which was showing up as stars in search results, but switched to a more complicated form that undoubtedly search engines will have hard time to decipher.
Before (as of 11/13):

 <meta itemprop=”itemreviewed” content=”Apple Inc.” /><span itemprop=”rating” itemscope=”itemscope” itemtype=”http://data-vocabulary.org/Rating“><meta itemprop=”average” content=”4.4″ /><meta itemprop=”best” content=”5″ /><meta itemprop=”worst” content=”1″ /></span><meta itemprop=”votes” content=”356937″ /></div>

*side note, FB resorted to data-vocabulary.org (no longer active) to structure their data, schema.org was available since 2011 as a new standard.

Now (as of 12/13)

<div class=”_4dg8 rfloat _ohf”><div class=”_4dg9″>Average User Rating</div><div class=”_4dga”><div class=”_5v3v”>4.4</div>

This brand-new rating feature presented by Facebook to pages has its own sets of benefits and drawbacks.  Here are a few obligatory pros and cons that will let you better understand how the 5-star rating system can actually affect customers and business owners alike.

            •           Benefits

Businesses that opted to place their physical address as part of their details automatically get the 5-star rating feature. For companies that wish to increase their sales through quality feedbacks rather than numbers of followers or friends, this is perceived to be highly beneficial.

Companies big and small used social networking sites to increase their authority and profitability on the long term. Unfortunately, social media optimization strategies initially point out that larger numbers of followers or friends is the only means to enhance a company’s reputation. Although there is truth in this statement to some extent, customers are now increasingly becoming more discerning when purchasing for goods and services.

The five-star system enables business owners gain some honest feedback from their client base, which in turn helps them in enhancing the quality of their offerings. Facebook’s brand new five-star rating system fosters customer engagement and help businesses focus on strategies that actually matter the most.

            •           Drawbacks

The prominence of the 5-star rating system on Facebook company pages can make or break the reputation of your business. Let us admit to the fact that there are different types of customers, and a portion of this will express their dissatisfaction with the use of this rating system.

Another drawback is that competitors may well use this strategy to create fake negative reviews for their closest rivals, thus making it all the more difficult for customers to learn about the truth and leave companies struggling to push their sales and authority in the top position where it should be.

The five-star rating system will also be a hindrance for Facebook company pages of businesses that opt to hide their physical address online. They may have decent and satisfactory goods and services, but with the five-star rating system becoming increasingly popular and a reliable tool for customers, having none in place may be detrimental to the growth and expansion of an organization as well.