Yelp Spam Begone: Software Weeds Out Fake Reviews [VIDEO]

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Software engineers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a spam-detecting algorithm that uncovers bogus reviews on popular review sites such as Yelp or Amazon.

The program called GSRank -- Group Spam Rank -- targets groups who work collaboratively to write fake reviews.

"People try to game the system by opinion spamming (e.g., writing fake reviews) to promote or demote some target products," the official report says. "For reviews to reflect genuine user experiences and opinions, such spam reviews should be detected."

Finding groups of spammers was more effective than finding individuals in this study. Certain behaviors stuck out. Spammers post frequently in a four-day window and target new products or those with no reviews.

Another telltale sign of spam: similar language used throughout a number of posts.

GSRank has consistently outperformed all other current methods when it comes to detecting fake reviews, according to the research report.

The development of the algorithm -- sponsored by the Google Faculty Research Award -- will help companies direct their users away from spammers. The engineers have been able to focus on the suspected spammers and see how they work.

Do you use online review websites? Tell us in the comments if you have suspected spam while shopping for products online.