About Rankwise

Rankwise (rankwise.ca) is a local-marketing agency based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It works with local service businesses across the Lower Mainland — plumbers, electricians, HVAC contractors, roofers, landscapers, auto repair shops, dentists, chiropractors, med spas, lawyers, and veterinarians — on the local-search side of their business: Google Business Profile, reviews, citations, and Map Pack visibility. Contact: zshef@rankwise.ca.

Founder-led audits

Zack reviews the market before the call.

Rankwise is intentionally narrow on function, broad on vertical: local search only, one business per city, per category. Every audit starts with live Map Pack checks, competitor profiles, review signals, and the first city terms most likely to move.

What Rankwise does

Rankwise provides local-search marketing for local service businesses competing for Map Pack positions across the Lower Mainland. The work covers:

• Google Business Profile optimization — primary category setup, service area configuration, photo strategy, weekly posting cadence
• Review velocity management — building consistent review flow, response cadence, and recency signals
• Citation consistency — auditing and correcting NAP (name, address, phone) data across Google, Yelp, HomeStars, Yellow Pages Canada, BBB, Apple Maps, and Bing Places
• Local content strategy — city-specific service pages, blog content targeting the local-search queries each category's customers actually use across the Lower Mainland
• Map Pack tracking — monthly ranking reports across target cities and keywords

The model

Rankwise works with one business per city, per category. No exceptions. If Rankwise is already working with a plumber in Burnaby, it won't take on a second Burnaby plumbing client — the conflict of interest doesn't work.

All engagements are month-to-month, no long-term contracts. Before month one on Foundation and Growth plans, Rankwise documents the starting Map Pack position and sets a 90-day target position in writing for the cities and keywords the client cares about. If we miss the agreed milestone, billing pauses until we hit it. In plain terms: on the Foundation and Growth plans, your target position is agreed in writing before you pay, and if we miss it by day 90, billing pauses until we hit it. The model keeps the agency accountable and removes the common agency dynamic where a retainer gets collected while nothing moves.

Founded in 2026, and why new is fine

Rankwise was founded in Vancouver, BC by Zack Shefrin in 2026. It is a new business, and there are no client results to publish yet, which is why the proof on this site is dated public market data from the Lab, not testimonials. What makes new workable: the founder does the audit and the work personally, with no account managers or handoffs; every engagement is month-to-month, with no long-term contract; and on the Foundation and Growth plans, your target position is agreed in writing before you pay, and if we miss it by day 90, billing pauses until we hit it.

Why we specialize in local search

Every local-service category shows up in the Google Map Pack the same way — a business profile, a cluster of reviews, and a handful of city-level searches that decide who gets the call. What changes category to category is the intent pattern: a plumber's customer is often searching for an emergency, a dentist's customer is comparing profiles over weeks. Staying narrow on the local-search function — instead of also running ads, building websites, or managing social — lets Rankwise reuse the same market research, ranking checks, page structure, and Google Business Profile playbooks across every category, rather than being a generalist that's mediocre at all of them.

The research base

Rankwise runs an ongoing research lab — the Rankwise Lab — tracking Map Pack competition across Metro Vancouver. The Lab has published market studies for roofers, plumbers, electricians, landscapers and auto repair shops (July 2026), lawyers and veterinarians (August 2026), and HVAC (May–June 2026). Each one covers its own category only: the July 2026 roofer study, for example, covers 216 roofer searches across 18 Metro Vancouver cities, and the May 2026 HVAC study tracked 36 Map Pack positions across 12 local HVAC searches, held by 19 unique contractors. None of them are client results. The same Map Pack mechanics (profile completeness, review velocity, citation consistency) decide rank in every local category. That data shapes how Rankwise plans its work and the blog content it publishes. Two articles show the method step by step: why a business drops out of the Map Pack, and how the primary Google Business Profile category decides which searches a business appears for.

Who this is for

Rankwise works with Lower Mainland local service businesses who rely on Google for inbound calls or bookings — plumbers, electricians, HVAC contractors, roofers, landscapers, auto repair shops, dentists, chiropractors, med spas, lawyers, and veterinarians. The right fit: an owner-operated or small-team business that's getting most work through word of mouth or referrals, knows Google is leaving calls on the table, and wants someone who handles the local-search side without requiring them to manage it.

Our core is local search: your Google Maps listing, your reviews, and your rankings. If you also want Google or Meta ads, we can run them alongside it or work with your current setup. Rankwise is not the right fit for businesses with in-house marketing staff, or for businesses outside the Lower Mainland.

Service area

Rankwise serves local service businesses across the Lower Mainland and the Fraser Valley, BC, in every category listed above. The Lab's published market studies cover eight of those categories (roofers, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, auto repair shops, lawyers, veterinarians and HVAC contractors), each across the same 18 Metro Vancouver cities. HVAC is the one category that also has a page for each city so far; those pages are listed below, and the cities on them are the cities we work in for every category:

• Vancouver
• West Vancouver
• North Vancouver
• Burnaby
• Richmond
• New Westminster
• Coquitlam
• Port Moody
• Port Coquitlam
• Pitt Meadows
• Maple Ridge
• Surrey
• Delta
• White Rock
• Langley
• Abbotsford
• Mission

Rankwise also serves Chilliwack, with neighborhood-level coverage in Tsawwassen, North Delta, Metrotown, and South Surrey through their parent-city markets.