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This tells us nothing about the percentage of non-removed Yelp reviews that are fake, because all non-removed reviews are assumed, in the data, to be real.
This is linkbait and a complete misrepresentation of the data.
20% LOL! If only it were that low. I used to be a reputation management company, at one time we were responsible for 10% of the reviews in Silicon Valley. There were metro's where we were about 80% of the reviews. When you think that the majority of companies have less than 10 reviews, and most owners can't resist doing a review, and having a friend do a review you are at 20% really fast. When you combine that with o…
To me what this means is you can't trust a positive signal, but you still can trust a negative one. If it's really that bad, then they're clearly not on the ball.
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"You would expect it to be in Yelp's interest to demonstrate its reviews are credible, though I haven't seen that. Competition and articles like this should motivate them in that direction. In the meantime, they benefit from charging businesses to allow positive reviews to appear and to suppress negative reviews (if they're doing that, it would explain why they don't focus on credibility)." I think that you haven't b…
"In the meantime, they benefit from charging businesses to allow positive reviews to appear and to suppress negative reviews (if they're doing that, it would explain why they don't focus on credibility)."
We try to address this issue in our paper. Take a look at Section 3.4. Short summary: we do not find any noticeable differences in filtering between advertisers and non-advertisers, but there are limitations to our analysis.
Argh, I am so sick of seeing this article. From the study , 16% of all Yelp posts are identified by Yelp as fake , hidden from view , and not counted into a business's average score . This tells us nothing about the percentage of non-removed Yelp reviews that are fake, because all non-removed reviews are assumed, in the data, to be real. This is linkbait and a complete misrepresentation of the data.
I believe there is value in reviews, especially at a local level; I've found out about some really great local businesses based on the reviews but I'm so tired of people trying to game us. I'm tired of business owners who would rather argue with me for months on end and threaten legal action to have a totally legitimate negative review removed, or have their friends post glowing reviews, rather than just providing a good service and recognising they can't please everyone.
I wish there was a sure fire way of determining a persons intention when they write a review but it's impossible, so this problem will remain unsolved.
20% LOL! If only it were that low. I used to be a reputation management company, at one time we were responsible for 10% of the reviews in Silicon Valley. There were metro's where we were about 80% of the reviews. When you think that the majority of companies have less than 10 reviews, and most owners can't resist doing a review, and having a friend do a review you are at 20% really fast. When you combine that with o…
Argh, I am so sick of seeing this article. From the study , 16% of all Yelp posts are identified by Yelp as fake , hidden from view , and not counted into a business's average score . This tells us nothing about the percentage of non-removed Yelp reviews that are fake, because all non-removed reviews are assumed, in the data, to be real. This is linkbait and a complete misrepresentation of the data.
While I agree with you about the title of the article, it is not true at all that "all non-removed reviews are assumed, in the data, to be real." In fact, in our analysis we explicitly allow for the filter misclassifying reviews (that is to say filtering real reviews, or publishing fakes.)
I'm criticizing MW's interpretation, which assumed that your proxy was very accurate in terms of providing the proportion of fake reviews, but went on to imply that your proxy was highly inaccurate by talking about fake but visible reviews.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to rethink that then; I found one of my reviews filtered once, I have also been a "Yelp Elite" member so I am really unclear what criteria they use for the filtering. I also found some clearly fake reviews for the same place where my review was filtered. It was weird that they filtered my review as well because (I think) it was fairly balanced and mostly positive...
I don't know what goes into Yelp's filter either. I also agree that it can make mistakes. At the same time, I do think that the filter is more likely to catch a fake review than it is to catch a real review. This is the assumption our analysis relies on. (Not sure what I should be rethinking...)
I understand that this is one anecdote, but I've seen enough similar cases of misapplied filtering to take it seriously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't consider the owner's friend's review to be "fake." As for the owner him/herself, that might feel a bit unethical, but I still wouldn't call it "fake."
> I wouldn't consider the owner's friend's review to be "fake." I would. If Obama wrote a book and his childhood friend reviewed it on Amazon, I would discount that review. Or at least consider it highly suspect.