What Does the Metro Vancouver HVAC Map Pack Actually Look Like Right Now?
Rankwise Lab — Market Study · May 2026
What does the Metro Vancouver HVAC Map Pack look like right now?
In Metro Vancouver's HVAC Map Pack, based on 12 homeowner searches tracked in May 2026, two contractors appear in more than half of all results — and both have review counts in the hundreds. Across those 12 searches, 19 unique contractors appeared in 36 Map Pack positions. The median review count was 275. Every contractor that appeared had at least 21 reviews. All 19 rated between 4.7 and 5.0. Review volume is the clearest visible difference between contractors that appear and those that don't — not rating, not service breadth.
This is a Rankwise Lab Market Study — public Google data, observed and analyzed by Rankwise, not client results. The full methodology and data limits are at the end of this post.
How many reviews do you need to appear in the Metro Vancouver HVAC Map Pack?
In Metro Vancouver's HVAC Map Pack as of May 2026, a contractor needs at least 150–300 reviews to be a plausible competitor — and the top performers have 400 or more. The observed floor across all 36 appearances was 21 reviews; the median was 275. One Richmond contractor had over 4,400.
A handful of businesses dominate. One contractor appeared in 6 of the 12 searches — across furnace repair, AC installation, emergency calls, and heat pump installs in Vancouver. Another appeared in 4. The same names cycle through positions 1, 2, and 3 across multiple service types and cities. For a homeowner in Vancouver, Google is surfacing the same two or three options regardless of what they searched.
Getting to 150–300 reviews is a concrete target, not a moving goalpost.
Do star ratings affect Map Pack position for HVAC contractors in Vancouver?
All 19 unique contractors appearing across these 12 searches rated between 4.7 and 5.0, with a median of 4.9. A homeowner trying to choose between Map Pack results using star ratings is not getting meaningful signal. Above 4.7, star rating does not predict Map Pack position. Below 4.7, it may cost you appearances entirely. If you're in the 4.7–5.0 band, review volume is doing more work than fractional rating improvements.
Which cities in Metro Vancouver have the most room to compete in the HVAC Map Pack?
Vancouver accounted for 20 of 36 Map Pack appearances. Burnaby had 6. Coquitlam, Surrey, and Richmond each had 3. The contractors appearing in non-Vancouver cities are almost all locally based — a Burnaby contractor showing up for Burnaby furnace searches, not a Vancouver operator covering the whole region. Service-area breadth doesn't appear to help: the most consistent Map Pack presences have a tight city focus.
Burnaby and Richmond each have two to three contractors cycling through their Map Packs, with review counts ranging from 112 to 1,900. In Burnaby and Richmond, the lowest-review contractor in the Map Pack has as few as 112 reviews — the gap to a top-3 position is measurable and closeable. A contractor entering one of those markets at 150–300 reviews is in a plausible competitive position, not a hopeless one.
What ranking signals actually matter in the Metro Vancouver HVAC Map Pack?
Specialization by service type is less important than city relevance. The same contractors rank for furnace repair, heat pump installation, AC service, and emergency calls within their city. Google appears to be rewarding overall geographic authority, not optimization for specific service types.
Review volume is the visible differentiator. The contractors appearing most consistently have 200–500 reviews or more. The contractors that don't appear have fewer. This study doesn't establish causation — but across 36 appearances, review count is the one signal that clearly separates the top of the Map Pack from the rest.
The Burnaby and Richmond maps are a different competition than Vancouver's. The review range in those cities (112 to 1,900) is wide, which suggests a less consolidated market. The bottom of the competitive range there is 112 reviews — not 400 or 1,000.
Methodology and limits: Rankwise tracked Map Pack results for 12 homeowner HVAC searches from Vancouver, BC in May 2026 using SerpAPI against public Google results: "furnace repair Vancouver," "heat pump installation Vancouver," "emergency HVAC Vancouver," "HVAC contractor Burnaby," "furnace replacement Richmond," "air conditioning repair Vancouver," "heat pump repair Surrey," "boiler repair North Vancouver," "HVAC service Coquitlam," "furnace installation Burnaby," "AC installation Vancouver," and "emergency furnace repair Vancouver." Each search returns three Map Pack positions. Map Pack results vary by searcher location and over time. This study does not establish why any contractor ranks where they do — it observes who shows up, not what got them there. Review counts and ratings reflect the May 2026 snapshot and may have shifted.
When will Rankwise publish the next Metro Vancouver HVAC Map Pack study?
The next pull is planned for August 2026. Rankwise plans to re-run this study quarterly — repeating the snapshot against the same 12 searches to show which contractors are gaining positions, which are losing them, and where openings appear as the market shifts.
If you want to know where your own listing stands against the contractors in this data — your review count relative to what's ranking in your city, your category setup — that's what the audit call covers.
Book a 15-minute call at rankwise.ca/audit — we'll go over how you show up on Google today, which calls in your city might be going to competitors, and whether we're the right team to help from there. We only work with one HVAC contractor per city, so we take a close look before taking anyone on — we work month-to-month with guaranteed monthly targets, no lock-in. If we're not the right team, we'll say so.