I've searched everywhere and even raised a support request with Google, but nothing helped so far. The Google support person didn't even understand the question and just wasted my time.
1. There seems to be a lot of confusion on this question. Here are some of the suggestions I've seen on SO which seem to come from an epoch when "pause track" wasn't available in the universe:
- Remove all countries except one in which you don't expect any users (Didn't try)
- Upload an empty APK to the Open Testing track (Not sure if this works in 2021)
- Remove all testers (no option to do this in 2021 on Open Testing track)
2. But I went ahead and pressed the formal "pause track" button in Open Testing.
I took this route because the button is there and seems to tell me it's the right thing to do in 2021.
3. My question is as follows
Once the Open Testing track is paused, will old users' new reviews be visible in public? Will new users' reviews be visible in public?
4. A little bit of history to help you answer my question
- We launched under the Open Testing track and got a lot of good reviews and ratings.
- After several months we uploaded a new APK to the Production track and the Open Testing track got automatically moved to "Inactive". So far so good.
- Our test users upgraded to the production app and started giving us reviews and ratings. But they are all ending up as "Testing Feedback", i.e., invisible to the public. So we have 0 public reviews.
- Then I found out that I should pause the Open Testing track. I have paused it just this morning and the change is awaiting review. I will update when the review is done.
- I'm asking my question in #3 above because I don't any longer believe Google understands Google Play better than Stackoverflow users.