Yelp’s review filter is a scam

I must say I’m very disappointed with Yelp’s review filter.

I refuse to believe Yelps engineers could have written such a crappy algorithm to filter out so called “spam” business reviews, so the only explanation would be that Yelp is shaving off legitimate business reviews on purpose. I know Yelp has a reputation of extortion (See here or here), so it really doesn’t surprise me that Yelp would do such a thing.

I guess what pisses me off the most is that Yelp is not so smart on trying to hide the fact. For example, I have been keeping an eye on the reviews on a business and Yelps algorithm has been slowly but surely filtering more than half of them. I can guarantee that 100% of those comments are legit. What really gets me is that one of those reviewers actually checked-in inside the business and wrote a review, and that person’s review was marked as spam by Yelps filter. WTF! Really Yelp? What kind of spammer would go to a business, check-in, and write a fake review?

I want to believe there is no way they could be that stupid to create such a crappy algorithm so my conclusion is that they are going back to their roots of extortion. I almost want to encourage that business to try advertising on Yelp just to see how fast those so called spam reviews get marked as legitimate again.