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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. \nThe program called GSRank \u2014 Group Spam Rank \u2014 targets groups who work collaboratively to write fake reviews. \n\"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.\"\nFinding 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. \nAnother telltale sign of spam: similar language used throughout a number of posts. \nGSRank has consistently outperformed all other current methods when it comes to detecting fake reviews, according to the research report.\nThe development of the algorithm \u2014 sponsored by the Google Faculty Research Award \u2014 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.\nDo you use online review websites? Tell us in the comments if you have suspected spam while shopping for products online. \n\u202APhoto courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl \u202C\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/04/23/fake-reviews-software/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29>