Quick Answer
Because customers are finishing the journey inside Google Maps instead of coming to your website. According to GMBapi data reported by Search Engine Land in August 2026, US calls fell 11.9% and website clicks fell 12.5% year on year in Q2. Direction requests rose 21.1% over the same period, and rankings held steady. If your report leads with call volume, it will show a decline that looks like an SEO failure. The actual change is where the customer completes the task. Add direction requests to your reporting before you change anything else.
The Number The Industry Got Wrong First
This is worth knowing before you trust any figure on this topic, including the ones below.
According to that August 2026 account, GMBapi presented Q1 data at BrightonSEO in April 2026 suggesting actions and impressions had fallen by roughly half across their US portfolio. The conclusion drawn on stage was that local SEO was dying. On the strength of that reading, some agency customers were advised to move budget into paid search.
The Q1 data was then revised. Writing in Search Engine Land in August 2026, GMBapi co-founder Michel van Luijtelaar reported that the corrected figures did not support the earlier reading. According to that August 2026 update, US calls and clicks were each down 15.8% year on year rather than halved, with direction requests up 31.3%.
A real decline, then. Not a collapse.
Two things follow from that. The first is practical. If you moved budget in the first half of 2026 on the strength of the original number, recheck whether that decision still holds. The second is a habit worth keeping. A single quarter of platform data, presented at a conference, is a provisional reading. Wait for the second quarter before you restructure a budget around it.
What The Corrected Data Shows
According to the GMBapi figures published in August 2026, comparing Q2 2026 against Q2 2025 in the US:
| Metric | Q1 change | Q2 change | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calls | -15.8% | -11.9% | Falling, more slowly |
| Website clicks | -15.8% | -12.5% | Falling, more slowly |
| Direction requests | +31.3% | +21.1% | Rising, more slowly |
| Desktop Maps impressions | -17.9% | +3.2% | Reversed |
| Mobile Search impressions | -20.6% | -20.1% | Falling steadily |
All three headline movements decelerated between quarters. That matters. A metric falling more slowly is a different situation from one falling off a cliff. It supports the reading that this is a behaviour shift settling into a new normal, not an ongoing collapse.
The desktop Maps reversal is the line most people miss. Per the same dataset, it moved from -17.9% in Q1 to +3.2% in Q2. The shift toward Maps as the destination is no longer confined to mobile.
Your Market May Not Follow The US
This is where most coverage of this topic stops being useful for a business outside the United States.
According to the same August 2026 analysis, EU desktop Maps impressions fell faster in Q2, from -16.5% to -34.7%, even while direction requests kept growing. The UK moved differently again: mobile Maps impressions swung from +22.4% in Q1 to -70.8% in Q2, while direction requests and website clicks both continued to rise.
Three markets, three patterns. The author's own conclusion was that neither the EU nor the UK is simply trailing the US on a delay.
For an Indian or UAE business, the honest position is that this dataset does not cover you. What transfers is the method, not the percentages. Pull your own Google Business Profile performance for the last four quarters. Put calls, clicks and direction requests side by side, and see which way your own three lines point. Assume nothing from a US chart.
Change What You Report Before You Change What You Do
The failure mode here is not the traffic shift. It is a monthly report that only counts the actions which happen to be falling.
If your local report shows calls and website clicks, it is measuring the two behaviours that are declining while ignoring the one that is growing. That produces a conversation about SEO performance when the actual change is a customer choosing to drive to you instead of phoning first.
Treat direction requests as a conversion. For a restaurant, a clinic or a showroom, a direction request is closer to revenue than a website click ever was. It is a person deciding to physically arrive.
The tradeoff worth naming: direction requests are a weaker signal for businesses that sell remotely, and near useless for a service-area business that visits the customer. If you do not have premises people come to, weight calls and form enquiries more heavily and treat the Maps shift as background rather than as your headline.
A decision rule for the next review. If calls fall while direction requests rise by a similar or larger amount, treat it as a channel shift and change the report. If calls fall while direction requests are flat or also falling, that is a genuine visibility problem and worth a proper audit.
Your five-minute action today: open Google Business Profile performance and set the date range to the last 12 months. Check whether direction requests appear anywhere in the report you send to your team or your client.
Tips For Local Reporting That Survives This Shift
- Add direction requests to your monthly local report as a named conversion, not as a secondary metric buried under impressions.
- Split your Google Business Profile performance by desktop and mobile. The two moved in opposite directions in this data and a blended figure hides it.
- Keep call tracking, but stop treating call volume as the headline number for a business with premises.
- Add UTM parameters to the website link on your profile so Maps-sourced visits stay separable in GA4.
- Annotate the month you changed what you report. Otherwise the new line looks like a sudden improvement to whoever reads it next quarter.
- Check your own four-quarter trend before quoting any published percentage to a client. Regional patterns in this data diverged sharply.
What To Keep An Eye On
Watch the ratio between direction requests and calls rather than either number alone, because the ratio is what tells you a shift is happening rather than a decline. Watch whether your profile still shows a click-to-call button in AI-driven local results, since analysis of 179 profiles by Sterling Sky and Jepto found AI local packs frequently omit it. And watch for revisions. The headline figure in this story was corrected once already, by the people who published it.
FAQs
Does this mean local SEO is not working any more?
No. Rankings stayed broadly stable through this period in the data. What changed was where the customer completes the action, not whether you are visible.
Should I stop tracking calls?
No. Keep tracking them, but stop using call volume alone as the verdict on local performance. For a business with a physical location, direction requests now carry comparable weight.
Is this data relevant to India or the UAE?
Not directly. The figures cover the US, EU and UK, and those three markets already diverged from each other. Use the method on your own profile data rather than importing the percentages.
Who produced this data and do they have an interest in it?
GMBapi, a local SEO and reputation management software company, published the figures through Search Engine Land, which is owned by Semrush. That is worth knowing when you read any vendor dataset. It is also the same team that publicly corrected its own earlier reading, which counts in the other direction.
Where This Leaves You
The useful version of this story is narrow and practical. Calls and clicks are falling, direction requests are rising, rankings are roughly holding, and the size of the effect was overstated before it was corrected. None of that calls for a strategy change. It calls for a reporting change, and then a look at your own four quarters.
If you would rather have someone rebuild that reporting properly, that is part of our local SEO work. Our local SEO checklist for calls, visits and enquiries covers the profile fundamentals underneath this, and how rankings turn into leads and sales covers the wider measurement question. For a worked example of local reporting rebuilt around what customers actually do, see our restaurant chain local SEO case study.