Driving Directions - Ranking Factor?

[IanJohnson]

I recently had a client ask if Google uses the amount of driving direction requests on their GMB listing as a ranking factor and if they should be encouraging more of their customers to use this feature to boost their rankings. To my knowledge, this won't push the needle in any meaningful way (please correct me if I'm mistaken!), but I figured I would check the forums to see what others' thoughts were on this matter.

 

[Rich Owings]

This is my opinion only, but I suspect that any engagement signals (click to call, click for directions, photo views, leaving reviews, etc.) are used to determine prominence and influence rankings.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I agree with Rich. As with anything ranking related someone needs to do some testing to see what the impact is. I haven't seen any tests before but I think it would be an exciting one to test.