Getting, answering, reporting and understanding Google reviews. Every article answers one question, checked against Google’s own help pages, with the date.
Do not pay. Google’s own page on extortion scams says plainly “Do not engage with or pay the malicious individuals”, and paying moves the problem rather than ending it, because a review that breaks Google’s policy can be reported for nothing and one that does not is nobody’s to sell.
Usually not inside the thread. From our practice, arguing there only makes the thread longer and gives it a reason to stay on the page, so the work is to answer where an answer belongs and then publish enough useful material of your own that the thread stops being the only thing about you.
A review that names a member of your staff can be reported to Google: its content policy lists a full name or a last name among the personal information nobody may post about another person without consent. Report it next to the review, then reply in public without repeating the name.
The reviews from both profiles are combined into one, but your replies under them may not survive. Google’s merge page says it in a single sentence: “When 2 profiles are merged, their reviews are combined, but replies to reviews may be lost.”
A minor name change keeps the reviews. Google’s help page says that if a business makes a minor name change the reviews remain, but a bigger change counts as a new business, and then you close the old profile, open a new one, and the reviews stay behind on the old one.
A review from someone who was never a customer breaks Google’s rule against content that is not based on a real experience, so it can be reported. Report it from your profile, expect evaluation to take several days, and reply underneath in the meantime, because you cannot prove a negative to Google.
A competitor may be technically able to post a review, but Google’s Maps policy does not allow content posted on a competitor’s place to undermine it and treats conflicts of interest, including industry competitors, as biased review activity. Report the review under the policy reason you can support, keep any public reply neutral, and let Google decide whether the content should be removed.
Nothing stops a former employee from posting a review, but Google’s content policy calls it a conflict of interest, and reviews based on current or former employment are not allowed. You report it from your profile, evaluation typically takes several days, and you get one appeal if the answer is no.
Age is not a reason to remove a review. Google removes a review only when it breaks a content rule, and no rule is about how old the review is, so an honest bad review from years ago stays, and your reply under it is what the next customer reads.
You cannot delete a review yourself: Google says you can’t directly delete someone else’s review, and a one star review comes down only if it breaks a policy or the person who wrote it removes it. So report the ones that break a rule, answer the rest in public, and keep new reviews coming.