I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.
Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively?
We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.
Yes, in my experience I have seen reviews from regular Yelp folks (aka posting maybe a review once or twice a month) see their 5 stars review vanish in less than 48 hours... While at the same time a person posting a 1 star review without any other review posted prior and even after stick forever.
This is a classic 'Yelp' business practice and many business owners you can talk to will have many of such reports.
No, I believe most of the reviews were from first (or second) time yelpers. I can understand where they're coming from on a macro scale, but at the individual business level, it can be irritating.
