Where Directions Requests Come From

A report most owners never open

Inside Google My Business, the Insights section counts how many people asked Google for directions to your business. It also shows roughly where those requests started.

Most owners who open Insights look at total views and leave it there. The directions map sits further down the page, unread.

It answers a question every owner has a guess about: where do customers really come from? The guess is usually too local.

What the report shows

The directions section gives a count for the past week, month or quarter, with a map marking the areas where the requests started.

Alongside the map, the busiest areas are listed by name: towns, neighbourhoods or parts of the city.

It counts only requests made through Google. The areas are approximate, and places with very few requests may not appear at all.

The same page counts calls and website visits from the listing. Together with directions, they give a rough picture of what people do after finding you.

What to look for

• Clusters far from you that suggest a reason people travel.
• Gaps close by, where you expected customers and see few.
• Areas across a bridge or highway, where the route matters.
• Seasonal shifts between summer and winter months.
• Towns your website never mentions.

The last is the easiest to act on. If a town keeps appearing on the map and nowhere on your site, the people searching from there are finding you without any help from the website.

Why it is not the whole picture

The map counts only people who asked Google for directions. Regulars who know the way never ask, and nor do people who simply walk past.

So it leans towards newcomers and people travelling from further away. That is a bias, but a useful one: they are exactly the customers your marketing is meant to reach.

A request is also not a visit. Some people check the route and never come, so read the map as interest, not footfall.

Checking it against your own records

The map is one source. Set it beside what you already hold: postal codes from invoices or the customer list, delivery addresses, and what callers say when they ask how to find you.

Where the sources agree, act on them with some confidence.

Where they disagree, the map usually reflects newcomers and your records reflect regulars. Both are worth knowing, and the difference between them shows where new customers are coming from.

A worked example

A scrap metal recycler sits on an industrial road where a town gives way to farms. Contractors and homeowners bring it copper, aluminium and steel, and its Google My Business listing is at the yard's address.

The owner assumed most loads came from the town, and the website and AdWords targeting were built around that. The directions map disagreed: the busiest areas were two newer suburbs along the highway, half an hour away.

The reason was plain once he saw it. Neither suburb had a scrap yard, and both were full of new subdivisions, where electricians, plumbers and roofers are left with offcuts of wire, pipe and flashing.

The AdWords targeting now includes both suburbs. The website's page for contractors names them, gives the drive time from the highway exit, and explains which gate leads to the scale and where a truck with a trailer can turn.

Nothing about the yard changed. The site simply began describing the customers it already had.

Using it for ads

AdWords can target a set distance from your address, or specific towns and neighbourhoods by name. Compare either one with the map.

Areas with plenty of requests outside your targeting are candidates to add. Areas inside it with almost none may deserve a lower bid adjustment rather than the same spend.

Check the location option too. AdWords can show ads to people in an area or to people showing interest in it; a business serving locals usually wants the first.

The same areas can set the radius for any Facebook ads, so both campaigns describe the same customers.

Using it on the website

Name the towns and neighbourhoods customers actually come from, in a sentence on the contact page and wherever you describe your location.

Give directions from the main routes those people use: from the bridge, from the highway exit, from the transit station. Add parking and the entrance to use.

Resist building a separate page for every town with its name repeated throughout. One clear, true sentence helps visitors more than a dozen thin pages.

Check the pin on your listing while you are at it. If the pin marks the wrong side of a large building, every request sends newcomers slightly astray.

Delivery and service areas

For a business that also delivers, the map shows where pickup customers come from, which is often a guide to where delivery would be welcome next.

An area just outside the delivery zone with a steady stream of directions requests is worth a look before deciding which way to extend.

Keeping a record

Insights only looks back a few months, so the pattern from this summer will be gone by next spring.

Each quarter, write the busiest areas and the total requests into a spreadsheet. After a year you can compare seasons, and after a change in advertising you can see whether the map moved.

Note beside each quarter anything that might explain a shift: a road closure, a new competitor, a campaign aimed at one town.

The counter-case

Businesses that travel to their customers, such as plumbers and cleaners, get few directions requests, and those that hide their address on the listing get almost none. For them, calls and job addresses are better guides.

Small numbers also mislead. Five requests from one town is a hint, not a pattern.

For a business people drive to, though, the map is the most direct evidence available of where customers start. Read it each quarter and let it shape the ads and the website.

This quarter

1. Open Insights in Google My Business.
2. Set the period to the last quarter.
3. Write down the busiest areas and the total.
4. Compare them with your ad targeting.
5. Name those areas on your website.
6. Add directions from the main routes in.
7. Repeat each quarter in the same spreadsheet.

Step three is the one people skip. Insights forgets, and without your own record there is nothing to compare next season's map against.

Newcomers who turn up in an unfamiliar neighbourhood for reasons of their own are the subject of the game sending players to your front door.

Frequently asked questions

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