Facebook reviews vs Google reviews: which matters for SA businesses?

Most SA small businesses run a Facebook Page for the same reason they run WhatsApp: it's where their customers already are. So when a happy customer offers to "leave you a review," it's natural to point them at Facebook instead of Google. That's usually the wrong instinct, for one simple reason: Facebook reviews aren't a star rating anymore, and almost nobody sees them unless they already follow your Page.

What Facebook actually shows now

Facebook replaced star ratings with recommendations back in 2018: a simple yes/no ("Recommends" or "Doesn't recommend") plus an optional comment, averaged into a percentage rather than a 1-5 score. That percentage only appears on your Page itself. It doesn't feed Facebook's search ranking the way Google reviews feed Google's map pack, and it never shows up when someone searches your business name on Google, which is where most new customers actually look you up first.

The short answer

Google reviews decide whether new customers find you. Facebook recommendations only reach people who already know you exist. They're not competing for the same job. A stranger searching "electrician in Kempton Park" sees a Google map pack ranked on review count and rating; they don't see your Facebook recommendation percentage at all, because it isn't part of that search.

Where Facebook still earns its keep

Facebook is genuinely useful for the customers you already have: repeat bookings, community groups, local buy-and-sell pages, and word-of-mouth referrals inside a suburb Facebook group. A recommendation there can nudge someone already considering you, and it's worth turning on and keeping tidy. It just isn't a discovery engine the way Google is, so it shouldn't be where you point every customer you're trying to ask for a review.

What a small business should actually do

1. Ask for the Google review, by name. "Could you leave us a Google review?" beats "could you leave us a review?", because people default to whatever platform they're already looking at, which for most people is Facebook or Instagram. Send the direct review link so there's no searching involved. Our full playbook covers the timing and wording that get a yes.
2. Turn recommendations on and leave them alone. Make sure your Facebook Page accepts them and reply to the ones that come in unprompted, but don't spend campaign effort chasing them.
3. Never mention Facebook in the same message as your Google ask. Giving a customer two options at once means most pick neither. One platform, one link, one message.
4. Reply to a bad recommendation the same way you'd reply to a bad Google review. Thank, own, fix, move offline works on any platform with a public comment box.

The 90/10 rule, again

Same split we give for Hellopeter vs Google: put roughly 90% of your asking energy into Google, where reviews compound into discovery, and let Facebook collect what it collects naturally. Our State of Google Reviews study found the median top-ranked SA listing holds 75 reviews; that number is the one worth chasing.

If you'd rather this happened automatically after every job, without deciding platform by platform, PeakReviews sends the exact right Google link over WhatsApp on its own. Two weeks free, no card needed.