[CASE STUDY] Influence of Direction Signals on GMB Ranking

Waiting for your update my friend. Good luck

Appreciate the study. Driving directions definitely work but you're doing it the hard way. And you need more actions than just driving directions and leaving reviews. You need to warm those accounts up. Really replicate real human behavior. Visit other businesses, leave them reviews, upload photos, answer questions, anything you can think of. ANd make it random.

bojanpeic said:

Around 6 months ago my mother opened a tailoring salon downtown. As I'm into IM it was natural for me to take care of her advertising, including GMB listing. I made the listing top-notch, made some NAP links to it, listed the business in local directories, and did all the usual stuff you would do for a local business.

I thought I was doing fairly good (never got deeply into it), until recently. I was offered a free GMB scan by a fellow blackhatter (thank you if you're reading this), just to find out the following:

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This is my ranking in each part of the city. Anything below 3 means my business is barely seen, if at all. In plain words, my ranking suck lol.

I started researching and realized that "Direction Requests" are one of the main signals in GMB ranking, and thus decided to do a case study. This map just seems perfect for it.

In the next 3 months, I'm going to request directions to my business and drive there from various locations. Not with my phone of course, but I will pick up my friends and then drive to the business, stay there for a couple of minutes and then leave. I will have my phone on Airplane mode while doing this.

I'll keep things random but I'll update you in the comments with each trip I take (men, women, request from home, request from mobile, iPhone, Android, everything). Sometimes I will have them leave a review after visiting and so on.

I'll do this in random intervals but I'm guessing it will be 50+ people by the end of March.

Then I will run the same test again and post the screenshot, just like the one above. Let's see how many greens we gonna score!

End Date: 31st March 2022.

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coolsheet said:

Appreciate the study. Driving directions definitely work but you're doing it the hard way. And you need more actions than just driving directions and leaving reviews. You need to warm those accounts up. Really replicate real human behavior. Visit other businesses, leave them reviews, upload photos, answer questions, anything you can think of. ANd make it random.

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I'm using the actual people's phones. This does significantly decrease the number of phones I can use but it gives me a genuine user experience.

So yea, I'm taking phones from friends, family, girlfriend, hers family, younger brother friends and so on. Will be enough to get close to ~50 direction requests.

So it's been 4 months. What's it looking like?

Any updates guy?

LMAO I JUST GOT A HARD ON!!!!!!!!!!





Fuck me dude... I'm busu AF right now, so I'm late with the update. I'll come up with a full update by EOW, but IT'S WORKING!!!

bojanpeic said:

LMAO I JUST GOT A HARD ON!!!!!!!!!!

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Fuck me dude... I'm busu AF right now, so I'm late with the update. I'll come up with a full update by EOW, but IT'S WORKING!!!

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Awesome work man. I'm trying out tools to automate the entire process at scale. Considering most of my clients are on the opposite side of the country than me, I have no choice.

bojanpeic said:

LMAO I JUST GOT A HARD ON!!!!!!!!!!

View attachment 207416

View attachment 207417

Fuck me dude... I'm busu AF right now, so I'm late with the update. I'll come up with a full update by EOW, but IT'S WORKING!!!

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Damn! You were right. Hope you & your mom enjoy the success & cash in!

bojanpeic said:

LMAO I JUST GOT A HARD ON!!!!!!!!!!

View attachment 207416

View attachment 207417

Fuck me dude... I'm busu AF right now, so I'm late with the update. I'll come up with a full update by EOW, but IT'S WORKING!!!

Click to expand...

Great job!

I’m working on a way to manipulate this driving directions process remotely. It definitely does work. Keep up the good work.

tipsavvy said:

Great job!

I’m working on a way to manipulate this driving directions process remotely. It definitely does work. Keep up the good work.

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If it works can you share

manpreet said:

If it works can you share

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share the results, then yes, I can probably do some case studies. I spent a few thousand dollars testing it out and learning it so might not share the method for free just yet

tipsavvy said:

share the results, then yes, I can probably do some case studies. I spent a few thousand dollars testing it out and learning it so might not share the method for free just yet

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No worries. Yeh share the results if possible, I'd like to know if it can be done

I found traveller status level 5 above seems to more weight...what is your accounts lkevel?

wow, you did a really great job. I have been doing research on GBM for a long time.

I currently have 8 iphones. i thought i could review from each of them manually with directions. directions will be made with software manually.

I was thinking of testing for a random business in the future.

How did you find the ranking of your business by city? can you send it to me by pm?

Love this study & wouldn't have guessed quite that much impact. If more work has been done on a remote method I am very interested.

how can someone simulate this without actually traveling to the address

can you do a weekly update.

DeFiNFT1 said:

how can someone simulate this without actually traveling to the address

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I didn't simulate this. I actually took real people's phones (friends, family, gf, hers family, etc) at their place or wherever they were atm, searched for KW, and requested directions to my business. Then stayed there for like 5-15 min, got a coffee for whoever gave me their phone and returned the phone.

Ok it took me a while to get back and report on this. Some of you might have seen results already, but for those who haven't - they are amazing!

A little backstory - My mom opened a Tailoring Salon downtown and as I'm into IM I'm taking care of everything relating to it, along with GMB profile. I did the usual stuff when it comes to optimization: Images, Posts, Products, Full Details, NAP Links and I had over 50+ 5 star reviews.

Then I did a scan and here's what it looked like for my main keyword "tailor":


I realized none of those is GMB ranking factor!

After doing some reading I figured Direction Signals can be a ranking factor, which made sanse. And believe me Direction Signals are the main ranking factors for GMB!

Fast forward 3 months, here's what it looks like:



Needless to say the business went crazy lol.

So, how did it happen?

- I requested directions 48 times during 3 months (+ genuine requests).
- I took a phone from a friend or a family member - real people with daily activity years back, that's what's most important!! They had the activity before me, they will continue to have it after me - Google sees them as genuine people which they are!
*I always had Airplane mode on my phone just as a precaution
- After taking the phone I searched for "Tailor" and went through Google to find my Tailoring Salon (remember, it was nowhere to be seen in the beginning!) I also went through other businesses, pretending to look at them and then end up choosing mine over theirs. Afterward, I requested directions and drove there. I spend 5-15 min in the business and returned the phone (+got a coffee for everyone involved).
- Sometimes I drove to the parts of town where I haven't made any Direction Requests to make sure to cover that area. After getting there I repeated the steps above.
*Couple of times I requested direction to a competitor, stayed there for 2 min, then searched again for "tailor" and went to my place. Stayed for 15 min! (Impersonating unsatisfied customer - I'm going to hell for many different reasons so this doesn't bother me one bit lmao.)
- After 3 months of doing this, you can see the results.

The town has around 100K inhabitants.
The area is not English speaking.

So there you have it - Direction Signals are the main ranking factor for GMB, as long as you keep them genuine and real!

SEOMadHatter said:

You could even be a little more BH with it. List free stuff on classifieds and tell them to meet you in front of that business - who doesn’t use GPS these days?

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Ha ha, love it