What does the Metro Vancouver plumber Map Pack actually look like?

Rankwise Lab — Market Study · July 2026

This is a Rankwise Lab Market Study: public Google Maps data, collected and analyzed by Rankwise, not client results and not a paid placement.

Abstract

Across 216 searches for plumbing services spanning 18 Metro Vancouver cities, the most frequently appearing business — Marvel Plumbing & Drainage — still turned up in only 18 of them, an 8.3% share. The median review count among businesses Google places at the top of these searches is 82, but 66 of the 628 tracked appearances belong to businesses with fewer than 20 reviews. No single plumbing company controls this market. Compared to other trades Rankwise Lab has studied in Metro Vancouver, this is one of the more fragmented fields observed to date.

1. The question

If you run a plumbing business in Metro Vancouver, here's what matters: when someone searches "emergency plumber Surrey" or "water heater repair Richmond," whose name shows up, and what did it take to get there? This study pulls 216 real searches across 12 plumbing service types and 18 cities to answer that directly. It matters because Google's map results are where most homeowners choose a plumber before they ever visit a website — and right now, that field is more open than a lot of owners assume.

2. Data & method

This study covers 216 keyword-city combinations, pulled directly via SerpAPI against public Google search results — the same data anyone could pull by running these searches themselves. It spans 12 service terms (plumber, emergency plumber, drain cleaning, faucet installation, gas line installation, leak detection, pipe repair, sewer line repair, sump pump installation, toilet repair, water heater repair, water main repair) each searched across 18 Metro Vancouver cities, generated 2026-07-10, search location Langley, British Columbia. Each keyword-city pair returned the top three local results Google displayed at the time of collection — which is why some totals below are counted per search (216) and others per individual business appearance (628, since one search can surface up to three businesses). Ratings and review counts reflect the individual snapshot date for each keyword, not a single fixed moment — treat them as ranges, not a live count. Four of the 216 searches returned no local map results at all: gas line installation Surrey, leak detection Delta, leak detection Surrey, and sump pump installation White Rock.

3. Findings

How concentrated is the plumber Map Pack in Metro Vancouver?

Not very. Out of 177 distinct businesses appearing across all 216 searches, the top name — Marvel Plumbing & Drainage — showed up in 18 of them. Every other business trails behind that. The next four most frequent names each appeared in 11 to 13 searches: Pacific Blue Mechanical & Plumbing, Alleviate Plumbing & Heating, Call Moe Plumbing, and a cluster of businesses tied at 11 appearances each.

The pattern worth noticing: most of the businesses on this list win by owning one or two cities hard, not by spreading across the whole region. Alleviate Plumbing & Heating's 13 appearances come almost entirely from North Vancouver. SteelStream's 11 come almost entirely from the same city. Marvel is the exception — it splits its 18 appearances between Port Moody and Burnaby rather than concentrating in one place.

How many reviews does it take to show up?

The median review count across 628 tracked appearances is 82, with counts ranging from 1 to 12,000. Split into bands, 398 appearances (63.4%) belong to businesses with 50 or more reviews. Another 164 (26.1%) sit between 20 and 49. Only 66 (10.5%) belong to businesses under 20 reviews.

The wide range matters more than the median here. SteelStream Plumbers Of North Vancouver holds 11 appearances with just 22 reviews. Milani Plumbing, on the other end, holds a similar 11 appearances with review counts running as high as 12,000 at some locations. Fifty-plus reviews is common among top-appearing businesses, but it isn't a strict floor — a smaller, tightly local review base can still hold ground.

Ratings themselves are compressed: almost every business on the frequent-appearance list sits in that same narrow 4.8-to-5.0 band. Most plumbers in this field already deliver that baseline — so rating won't set you apart. Look at review velocity and recency instead.

Which cities carry the most Map Pack activity?

North Vancouver leads with 41 tracked appearances, followed by Maple Ridge (38), Burnaby (35), Langley (34), New Westminster (33), Port Moody (32), Vancouver (31), Port Coquitlam (29), Pitt Meadows (27), Chilliwack (27), Abbotsford (26), Surrey (25), Coquitlam (24), Richmond (23), Mission (20), White Rock (20), Delta (16), and West Vancouver (13).

Vancouver proper, despite being the region's largest city, ranks seventh — behind North Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Burnaby, Langley, New Westminster, and Port Moody. That's a signal that plumbing search results are genuinely neighbourhood-level, not dominated by one metro hub.

Where does the Map Pack disappear entirely?

Four of the 216 searches came back with no local results at all: gas line installation in Surrey, leak detection in Delta, leak detection in Surrey, and sump pump installation in White Rock. That's 1.9% of the searches tracked. Google hasn't resolved a consistent local cluster for those specific service-city pairs yet — a business could be one of the first names to fill that gap rather than fighting an established field.

4. What this means for a plumbing business trying to show up on Google

• The ceiling is lower than you'd guess. The most-appearing business in this whole dataset still misses 91.7% of the searches tracked. If your business isn't showing up consistently today, you're not behind an unbeatable leader — you're behind a fragmented field where nobody has locked the door.
• Reviews matter, but hyper-local presence matters just as much. SteelStream holds 11 appearances on 22 reviews by owning North Vancouver specifically. A business chasing volume across the whole region without picking a home city may be working against itself.
• The 50-review mark is common, not mandatory. 63.4% of tracked appearances belong to businesses at 50+ reviews — that's the field you're up against on average. But more than a third of appearances sit below that, so a smaller review base isn't automatically disqualifying if the rest of the profile is dialed in.
• Ratings won't set you apart. Nearly everyone appearing repeatedly sits between 4.8 and 5.0 — Milani Plumbing holds 11 appearances at a 4.8 average, Pacific Blue holds 13 at 5.0, and that 0.2-point gap didn't move either one up or down in the field. If your rating is already in that band, look elsewhere for what's actually separating the businesses that show up from the ones that don't.
• Some city-service combinations have no established leader yet. Four searches in this dataset returned nothing. If your business serves Surrey, Delta, or White Rock and offers gas line work, leak detection, or sump pump installation, that's a specific, checkable gap worth looking at directly.

5. Limitations

Everything in this study is drawn from real, public Google Maps data, pulled the same way anyone could pull it themselves — that's what makes it checkable, not just claimed. With that said, a few limits are worth knowing before you act on it. This is a single point-in-time snapshot, not a trend line: Google's local results shift, sometimes week to week, and a business absent here could appear next month just as easily as one listed here could drop out. All searches originated from one location point (Langley, BC), so results may differ for a homeowner searching from Chilliwack or West Vancouver directly. Review counts and ratings reflect each keyword's individual snapshot date, not one synchronized moment, so treat them as approximate ranges. 79 of 628 tracked appearances (12.6%) could not be matched to a specific city from the listed address, and another 62 (9.9%) fell into a broader "other Lower Mainland" bucket — both are real limits of address-matching, not an attempt to gloss over data. This study has no click data, no call data, and no way to connect a business's map position to actual leads or revenue. It observes what's visible publicly; it doesn't measure outcomes.

6. What Rankwise tracks from here

Rankwise Lab studies how local search plays out across Metro Vancouver's service trades — this one is plumbing. The method is the same regardless of category: pull the businesses Google shows first, count the reviews, map the cities, and see who's actually winning the visibility. Rankwise re-pulls this dataset quarterly to see whether the current leaders hold ground or whether the open gaps identified here get filled by new entrants. If you want to see how your own city and category look on Google, book a free 15-minute audit at rankwise.ca/audit — we only take one business per city per service category, so we look closely before saying yes.

References

1. Google Maps public search results, collected via SerpAPI, search location Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Snapshot generated 2026-07-10.
2. Rankwise Supabase serp_snapshots table — 216 keyword-city combinations, 12 plumbing service terms across 18 Metro Vancouver cities.
3. Review counts and star ratings reflect the individual snapshot date recorded for each keyword at time of collection; figures are observational, not real-time.
4. City attribution inferred from the business address listed on each Google Maps profile; addresses that could not be confidently matched are reported separately as "Unknown" or "Other."
5. Methodology consistent with prior Rankwise Lab Market Studies on Metro Vancouver service trades — see future Rankwise Lab studies at rankwise.ca.