As you may have noticed, Facebook has begun to introduce their latest roll out: business reviews. In the same fashion that fans can rate movies or books on a one to five star scale, Facebook is now letting users rate brand pages in the same fashion. Such ratings have started popping up on varying business pages to the right of the company's name at the top of the Facebook page.

According to TechCrunch, the new rating system is available to a small group of pages --for now. In addition to the new search functions added to the platform last year, the business reviews will show up when fans search for particular topics like "restaurants nearby", etc.

A spokesperson from Facebook noted, “Star ratings encourage more people to rate a business, making it eligible to appear in News Feed and help others discover a business they didn’t know about previously. For businesses themselves, this also leads to greater brand awareness.”

It has yet to be determined whether or not the rating system will be mandatory for brands to use on pages. If they do become a default, brands will need to rethink how they are engaging and marketing to fans, as the page will inherently function more as a customer service platform. Because many users have varying reasons for Liking a page, an in-your-face star rating would certainly play a part in whether or not one engages with it -- just as it does for other review sites like Yelp and Angie's List. Personally, we're looking forward to see how this roll out will impact small businesses in the future.

Tell us: Have you seen the new business rating system on Facebook pages? If so, how do you think it'll impact upcoming marketing efforts?

-- Samantha