I am hearing reports that Google is showing driving direction request data on the Google Business Profile API for Service Area Businesses (SABs). SABs do not get a directions button, because those addresses are hidden in Google Search and Google Maps - so how does anyone trigger driving directions to that business?
Henry Heredia posted about this both on X and on Google Business Profiles Help forums and showed the issue.
Henry wrote, "we’ve observed across multiple Service Area Businesses (SABs) that have their addresses hidden over the last couple of months." "We’re seeing non-zero "Direction Request" counts in the GBP API reporting—even though, as expected, these SABs have no visible “Directions” button in their forward-facing business profile," he added.
Here is a screenshot from the API showing 21 direction requests:
But there is no option to see driving directions in the Google Business Profiles performance reports for SABs:
Where is this data coming from? This has to be some sort of bug. Others are reporting seeing this too...
Forum discussion at X and Google Business Profiles Help.
