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I am building a system in which user can vote up/down point for a product (just like Facebook Like function) besides voting up/down, user can give a comment on it.

But I am not sure which word should I use? Should I use the word "Vote" or "Rate"?

In dictionary, Vote: is you set a preference to something & Rate: is you rank something.

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    Contrary to the oldest answer, if you can only vote up or down, you are doing just that: voting. Rating would be giving it a score. X stars out of five, Y points out of ten, or what have you. When I click the up arrow right here, I am not rating, I am voting. And it's not like that's my personal preference or anything. Everyone across the network always says vote up/down, upvote/downvote. Absolutely nobody at all ever says rate up/down, uprate/downrate. Same on Reddit and other sites that use a system like that.
    – ЯegDwight
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 17:11

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When you vote, you get either a "pick your favorite from the list" choice or an "express your approval of this item" option.

pick-your-favorite voting:

Vote for one:
 [] Frederick J. Flontstein
 [] Barnabas P. Rubbhauser
 [] Dean O. Sauris

express-approval voting:

vote for this answer by clicking the up-arrow next to it!

When you rate, you get to assign the thing in question to some particular point along a scale:

                               1(bad) 2   3   4   5   6   7(great)
please rate the service today: o      o   o   o   o   o   o

When you rank, you place several objects in order of preference relative to each other:

My personal ranking of the four major citrus fruit flavors would be orange, lime, lemon, grapefruit.

For your application, I would say vote is the best choice.

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If you have a range (say, 1 to 5), you can ask your user to rate. I think you are better off using vote in the described context.

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"Rate" would be more appropriate for the scenario you described. Since users don't necessarily have to choose one product out of a bunch, and (I assume) products will have ratings uninfluenced by the existence of other products, "Rate" would make more sense. This would result with a "Rating" for that product.

In contrast, if you were to do a poll and requested users to vote for which product they recommended as best for the month, the word "Vote" would be applicable.

EDIT : I came back and read the answers from other users, and realized that I was wrong to suggest "Rate" in a strictly up/down scenario. "Vote up" and "Vote down" could be used, with a result showing the "Number of upvotes/downvotes" a product has. I apologize for the confusion, but had to fix it, so that other users won't be mislead.

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    @VijayaRagavan - Accepting answers is a good practice, but I strongly discourage accepting an answer less than 12 hours after a question is asked. A 24-hour wait is even better. There are whole continents of users who haven't had a chance to wake up and see this question yet. Moreover, this is the kind of question that might draw an array of differing opinions; let's not considered the matter settled after one decent answer comes along.
    – J.R. ♦
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 11:10
  • Yes you're right J.R...
    – VijayaRagavan
    Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 12:50
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"Vote" and "rate" are similar, but not really interchangeable.

Voting is a "yes" or "no" construct. In mathematical terms, it would be "binary," that 1 or 0.

Rating is evaluating degrees of goodness. From 1 (worst) to 10 (best), or vice-versa. Something like an 8 would be "more good than not," but not necessarily a yes or no.

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