To Meta Platforms, Inc.

Small businesses rely heavily on Facebook to build their reputation, communicate with customers, and be discovered in their communities.

However, Facebook’s search system can display negative reviews and recommendation posts about completely unrelated businesses when users search for a specific company by name.

For example, searching the exact name of a local landscaping company can produce negative reviews written about entirely different landscaping businesses. Because these posts appear alongside the company’s actual Facebook Page and content, a potential customer can reasonably mistake them for reviews of the business they searched for.

The reviews themselves are not the problem. The association is.

A customer should be able to criticize or review a business. But that review should not appear in searches for an unrelated company simply because the businesses operate in the same industry or share keywords such as “landscaping.”

This can unfairly damage the reputation of small businesses that have no connection whatsoever to the complaints being displayed.

We are asking Meta to improve Facebook’s business search system so that:

• Reviews and recommendations about another named business are not prominently displayed when searching for an unrelated business.
• Facebook provides business owners with a way to report incorrect search associations, separate from reporting the original post.
• Search results clearly identify which business a review or recommendation actually refers to.
• Meta provides a review process when unrelated content is repeatedly associated with a business’s name.
• Small businesses should not have to defend themselves against complaints that were never made about them.

We’re asking Meta to fix Facebook Search so that searching for a business doesn’t mistakenly associate that business with another company’s negative reviews.

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This is what a customer sees when searching for our business by name on Facebook.

The search is specifically for “Nickle Landscaping,” yet directly beneath our business listing Facebook displays negative recommendations concerning other landscaping companies that have no affiliation with us.

These reviews should remain available for the businesses they were written about. The issue is that Facebook’s search results can present them in a way that makes them appear connected to an unrelated business.