Thirty million people used the yelp website last month to make decisions about where to spend their money. The site lets customers post reviews of local businesses all over the country, but now some of those businesses claim Yelp's rating system is rigged, and favors businesses who pay for protection!

Dr. Lila Schmidt didn’t know much about Yelp until they called her up and asked her to advertise. She said she told them no thanks and then she says, “We were informed by the company that if we paid three hundred dollars, they would make sure that negative comments were removed or pushed to the bottom and filtered so they’re more difficult for a consumer to find.”

Yelp admits they filter abusive reviews and only some are used for businesses overall rating. Dr. Schmidt’s rating is based on six reviews, but a new feature lets you check out the reviews Yelp filtered out and nine of the eleven hidden reviews give Schmidt a five star rating, but they don’t show up on her main page. Yelp says a computer filters reviews based on a complex algorithm designed to prevent fraud.

Dr. Schmidt says the message from Yelps advertising staff was purposely plain, but Yelp officials say that’s simply not true. They say that reviews are never removed because a business pays a fee, but hundreds of small businesses around the country have now joined together in a class action lawsuit claiming they were told if they paid up the bad reviews would go away.

Greg Weston is the San Diego lawyer who filed that lawsuit and he says a bad rap on Yelp can spill over onto other sites like Google. When Turko spoke with Yelp officials, they just couldn’t explain why hundreds of business owners are telling the same story about Yelp’s advertising come-on. They deny all of the allegations in the lawsuit and they will fight for their own reputation in court.