What Does It Take to Hold a Top-3 Map Pack Position in Metro Vancouver HVAC?
Rankwise Lab — Market Study · May 2026
This is a Rankwise Lab Market Study — public Google data, observed and analyzed by Rankwise, not client results.
What does it actually take to hold a top-3 HVAC Map Pack position in Metro Vancouver?
When a homeowner in Vancouver searches "furnace repair" or "heat pump installation," three HVAC businesses get the call. The short answer on who those three are: a small group of businesses dominates most searches, reviews are the clearest separator, and the competitive bar varies meaningfully by city. Contractors outside those three positions are harder to reach. Rankwise pulled Map Pack data across 12 homeowner HVAC searches in Metro Vancouver to find out who holds those positions, what their profiles look like, and what the review and rating benchmarks are for contractors trying to compete.
How was this data collected?
Rankwise tracked Map Pack results for 12 homeowner HVAC keywords — searches like "furnace repair Vancouver," "heat pump installation Vancouver," and "HVAC contractor Burnaby" — from a Vancouver search location using SerpAPI against public Google results. Data reflects a single point in time: May 2026. This shows who appears and what their profiles look like, not why they rank or what actions caused those results. No click data, no call volume, no internal analytics from any contractor.
Who holds the top-3 positions across Metro Vancouver HVAC searches?
The market is concentrated. Across 12 tracked keywords and 36 Map Pack appearances, 19 distinct businesses appear — but one appears in 6 of 12 keyword results, and three others appear in 3 or 4 each. Most businesses appear only once.
That matters. A contractor isn't competing against 19 different businesses. They're effectively competing against three or four that Google consistently surfaces across multiple HVAC searches. Breaking into that group requires more than showing up for one query.
How many reviews does it take to hold a top-3 position?
The review range across all 36 Map Pack appearances runs from 21 to 4,400, with a median of 275.
That spread is wide, but the pattern is instructive: 25 of 36 appearances involve businesses with 50 or more reviews. Zero appearances involve a business with fewer than 20 reviews. The floor is real.
The businesses appearing most frequently — those showing up across 3 to 6 tracked keywords — tend toward the higher end of that range. The contractor appearing in 6 of 12 results holds 41 reviews and a 5.0 rating, which shows that raw review count alone doesn't predict frequency of appearance. But no business with under 20 reviews breaks into the Map Pack anywhere in this dataset.
A practical read: a contractor with fewer than 20 reviews is already behind before any other factor is considered. Getting to 50 puts a business in the range where Map Pack appearances are common. Getting to 200-plus puts them in the range where consistent multi-keyword dominance appears.
Does rating actually separate Map Pack competitors?
Barely. Ratings across all 36 appearances range from 4.7 to 5.0. Only one business holds a 4.7. The rest are 4.8, 4.9, or 5.0. Fourteen appearances belong to businesses with a perfect 5.0.
Rating is effectively a floor requirement, not a differentiator. A 4.6 or below likely disqualifies a business from contention. Above 4.7, rating alone does not separate the businesses that dominate from those that appear occasionally.
Which cities show the most Map Pack competition — and which have gaps?
Vancouver dominates, accounting for 20 of 36 Map Pack appearances. Burnaby follows with 6. Coquitlam, Surrey, and Richmond each contribute 3. One appearance has an unresolved city.
That distribution reflects both search volume and competitive density. Vancouver is the hardest market in this dataset: multiple businesses are entrenched across several keyword categories, and the review counts of the most frequent Vancouver Map Pack holders are among the highest in the dataset.
Burnaby, Coquitlam, and Richmond show fewer dominant repeat players. The Burnaby results, for example, are split among three businesses across two tracked keywords — none of them appearing elsewhere in the dataset. Surrey and Richmond follow a similar pattern.
For a contractor in those cities, the benchmark to reach is lower than Vancouver — and the field is less consolidated.
What does this mean for a contractor trying to rank?
Review count is the clearest barrier to entry. No business in this dataset with fewer than 20 reviews holds a Map Pack position. The median across all appearances is 275. A contractor with 15 reviews is not in the conversation. A contractor with 50 is.
Multi-keyword presence separates the top tier. The businesses that dominate this dataset don't win on one search term — they appear across furnace repair, AC installation, heat pump installation, and emergency calls. That pattern suggests profile depth and consistency matter more than optimizing one phrase.
City matters for the target number. A contractor entering the Burnaby or Coquitlam market is looking at a different review benchmark than one entering Vancouver. The data doesn't pin down an exact number by city, but the competitive concentration is visibly lower outside Vancouver.
Perfect ratings are common — a 4.6 is not. Among every business appearing in this dataset, 4.7 is the floor. A contractor holding a 4.5 has a profile problem that review volume alone won't fix. Quality of reviews matters before quantity does.
What this study doesn't tell us
This is a snapshot from one point in time and one search location. Map Pack positions shift — sometimes week to week. Results vary based on where in Metro Vancouver the search originates. This dataset shows public profile signals — review count, rating, city — but not the full picture of why any specific business ranks: website authority, GBP category selection, posting cadence, citation consistency, and other factors are not measured here. Nothing in this data establishes causation. A contractor reaching 275 reviews will not automatically hold a Map Pack position.
What Rankwise tracks from here
This snapshot is the baseline for a quarterly Lab study. Rankwise monitors these 12 keywords on an ongoing basis, so future versions will track whether dominant businesses hold their positions, whether review counts are climbing, and whether new entrants break into the top three. That's the kind of movement that tells a contractor whether the window in their city is opening or closing.
If you want to see where your business stands against the current Map Pack in your specific city — how many reviews the top three hold, what their ratings look like, and where there's room to grow your call volume — that's what the audit call covers.
Book a 15-minute call at rankwise.ca/audit. We work with one HVAC contractor per city, so we take a close look before taking anyone on. On the call: how your business shows up on Google today, which calls in your city might be going to competitors instead of you, and whether we're the right team to help grow your call volume from there. If we're not, we'll say so.