yelp reviews yelp.com Can ruin a business - promotes bad reviews, omits good reviews, blames it on software Internet

I guess YELP.com is nothing more than a fraud - surely not a neutral rating place. While looking up the phone number to a local business, I saw it had 1 star. Shocked, I linked to it and read the reviews - they were horrible. I knew that was wrong, by my personal experience (nearly 40 years-worth), it was not true. There was no way to rate those reviews as 'not helpful' only 'helpful' or two other baloney options. So I wrote my own review. I went about my business and later went back to find that my review was not posted.

After poking around the site a bit, it looks like something is not right there. How could so many negative/1 star reviews be the basis for ratings? Well, my review is still not there, and of the 21 total, only 4 are counted, for a total rating of 1.5 stars. The other 17 reviews are "not recommended" but, there is no option to recommend them like on the first four. If the option is 'recommend' or 'funny' or 'cool', perhaps any vote at all keeps a bad review on the first page. The rating of the remaining 17 reviews is 4.12, a far cry from 1.5.

So it seems YELP is a sham; a farce, a fake, a wannabe legitimate ratings site. I saw a post from a business owner asking about the ratings system and the answer was that they use a software program. It is ridiculous that they can so adversely affect someone's livelihood and then blame it on software. Well, how about we do the same favor for them, only they are earning the 1 star rating. Maybe when enough people catch on, they will be yelping their sorry butts down the road.

Tha name of the outstanding business they are harming is Nagel's Candy Barn in Randolph, NJ. Our family has gone there almost as long as they are in business. The reviews are screaming 'personal vendetta', and they certainly are not reflective of the 45+ years family business. It's a shame there are such miserables out there.