Getting, answering, reporting and understanding Google reviews. Every article answers one question, checked against Google’s own help pages, with the date.
Google’s own advice is to reply, and its local ranking page says “Positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out.” The same page names the ranking factors as relevance, distance and popularity, and puts reviews and ratings under popularity; replies are a recommended action there, not a listed factor.
Not always: a new Google review is checked against Google’s content policies before it settles on your profile, and Google’s help page says that in some cases this check might take a few days. There is no published number of minutes or hours, so a review that is not there tonight is not lost yet.
Yes, in Google’s own words: its local ranking page says “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” Reviews sit under the factor Google calls prominence, one of three factors with relevance and distance, and there is no way to pay for a better position.
No. Google’s help pages let an owner read, reply to, report and appeal reviews, and none of them describes a switch that turns reviews off. Removing the profile from your account does not help either: Google says the reviews remain and the business may still show on Search and Maps.
No. Google’s review rules say incentivized reviews “are not allowed and will be removed from Maps”, and offering payment, discounts, free goods or services for any review is on the list of things a business may not do. You can ask every customer for an honest review, but no reward may hang on it.