What is the one thing these five studies have in common?

Toronto. Every Ottawa study was cross-referenced against the July 2026 Greater Toronto Area study in the same vertical, by exact domain match, and every one of them found the same domains answering in both cities. The share varies enormously — 13% of dental citations, 22% of physiotherapy, 54% of legal firm citations — but the mechanism does not. An AI Overview cites whichever page best explains the question, wherever it was published, and Google's map pack constraint does not apply above it.

Are the sub-markets the same in every study?

Yes — all five cover the same 7 sub-markets: Ottawa (Central), Kanata, Nepean, Orléans, Barrhaven, Vanier, Hunt Club. That is what makes them comparable. A metro with different geography would be tested against its own sub-markets, and the counts on this page would change with it.

Why do the studies differ on how much the Google listing matters?

Because Google weights Business Profile panels very differently by vertical, and we do not know why. What we can report is the measurement: 38% of Ottawa cosmetic surgery citations and 37% of physiotherapy citations were listing panels, against 6% in accounting and none at all in legal. Practically it decides whether the work in front of you is publishing or listing maintenance, and those are different jobs done by different people.

Can I compare these figures with another city?

Yes, and that is the point of holding the method constant. The same five verticals were run across the Greater Toronto Area in July 2026 and across the Calgary region and Metro Vancouver on the same days as these. The comparisons are worth reading in both directions: Ottawa physiotherapy holds 31% of its own market, Calgary 52% and Metro Vancouver 67%.

How current are these?

All five were captured on August 2, 2026 and each states its own crawl window. AI Overviews are generated fresh per query and vary between runs, so treat any single figure as a snapshot rather than a ranking position. Structural findings — how concentrated a market is, which source types dominate, whether citations cross city boundaries — hold up far better than individual counts.

Market · Ottawa

What Google's AI Recommends Across Ottawa

Five citation studies run through one instrument in one city — dental, legal, physiotherapy, accounting and cosmetic surgery — across the same 7 sub-markets, on the same day.

Every one of them was cross-referenced against our Greater Toronto Area studies from a month earlier. The same domains keep appearing in both, and that is the finding this page exists to make.

Compare the five The studies Method

5 studies7 sub-markets1300 citationsCaptured August 2, 2026

The studies

Every study names each cited business by domain, with the full method and its limitations. No download gate.

What five markets in one city show

In every Ottawa vertical we measured, some share of the city's own answers is held by businesses that are not in Ottawa — from 13% in dentistry to 54% of legal firm citations. Proximity decides the map pack. It does not decide the answer above it.

Studies in this market: 5 Studies in this market
Queries run: 105 Queries run
Citations captured: 1300 Citations captured
Ottawa businesses named: 198 Ottawa businesses named

What does this page cover?

Five separate citation studies of Google AI Overviews, all run across the same 7 Ottawa sub-markets on August 2, 2026, plus the comparison between them.

105 queries run with city-level location targeting
1300 citations captured and classified by hand
198 Ottawa businesses named across the five leaderboards
Cross-referenced against the GTA by exact domain match, in every vertical
Every study published in full — method, leaderboard and limitations
Google AI Overviews only, which is the surface that can be publicly re-checked

The Comparison

Five Markets, One Method

This is the only thing on this page the individual studies cannot tell you. Own-site share says how much of the answer is yours to win; the listing column says whether the work in front of you is publishing or Business Profile maintenance; and the last says how much has already gone to somebody who is not in Ottawa.

Market	To local websites	Businesses cited	Google listings	Answered from outside	What it means
Legal	88%	65	0%	54% also cited in Toronto	Highest own-site share in the city — and the two markets have merged.
Dental	48%	52	31%	13%	Widest local field. Toronto clinics take the implant question.
Cosmetic surgery	38%	21	38%	16%	Most closed market measured: ten clinics hold 87% of citations.
Accounting	35%	21	6%	27%	Smallest field, and a quarter of the answer is Reddit and the CRA.
Physiotherapy	31%	39	37%	22%	Weakest local position anywhere in the series. OHIP is answered by Toronto.

The legal study measured overlap rather than location: “also cited in Toronto” means the same domain appears in both the Ottawa and Greater Toronto Area datasets, which includes Ottawa firms winning Toronto's answers as well as the reverse. The other four measured verified head-office location. The two are not the same figure and are labelled accordingly.

The Studies

5 Published Reports for This Market

Each is a full report — leaderboard naming every cited business, the three questions broken out, source breakdown, method and limitations. Nothing is held back for the download.

Study	Captured
Dental 21 patient-intent queries across seven Ottawa sub-markets. 52 practices named, 232 citations captured — and 15 Greater Toronto Area clinics cited as the answer to Ottawa patients' questions.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Legal 21 client-intent cost queries across seven Ottawa sub-markets and three practice areas. 65 firms named, and 54% of firm citations go to firms also cited in Toronto's answers.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Physiotherapy 21 patient-intent queries across seven Ottawa sub-markets and three patient questions. 39 clinics named — and on OHIP coverage, Toronto clinics take more than twice the citations Ottawa clinics do.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Accounting 21 client-intent fee queries across seven Ottawa sub-markets and three services. Only 21 Ottawa firms cited city-wide, and Reddit is quoted more often than every firm but one.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Cosmetic surgery 21 patient-intent cost queries across seven Ottawa sub-markets and three procedures. Just 21 clinics account for every website citation, and ten of them hold 87% of them.	August 2, 2026	Read the study

Method

The Same Instrument, Five Times

STEP 01

Ran the same instrument in each vertical: patient- or client-intent cost queries with city-level location targeting across the same 7 sub-markets — Ottawa (Central), Kanata, Nepean, Orléans, Barrhaven, Vanier, Hunt Club.
STEP 02

Asked three questions per vertical, held constant across every sub-market, so a weak area and a weak question can be told apart.
STEP 03

Captured the complete search result page for each query, including the AI Overview block, its generated text, and every source it cited.
STEP 04

De-duplicated citations per answer, so a business cited twice within a single AI Overview counts once.
STEP 05

Cross-referenced every cited domain against our July 2026 Greater Toronto Area studies by exact domain match, so the Toronto overlap is a measurement rather than an inference from business names.
STEP 06

Reviewed each cited source by hand and classified it as a local business's own website, a Google Business Profile listing, or a third party.

The 7 Sub-Markets

Every Ottawa study was run against the same list: Ottawa (Central), Kanata, Nepean, Orléans, Barrhaven, Vanier, Hunt Club.

Holding that constant is what lets the five be compared. It also means the counts on this page are specific to this city — a metro with different geography gets tested against its own sub-markets, and any figure derived from the number of them changes accordingly.

Generated answers differ by where the searcher is, which is why every study targets sub-markets individually rather than the city as a whole. Several findings only exist because of that: a Mississauga dental clinic answering for six of the seven Ottawa areas, two Toronto physiotherapy clinics appearing in all seven.

Questions About the Ottawa Studies

See Where You Sit In Your Market

These studies show the market. They do not show your position in it — whether you are cited at all, on which of the three questions, and which competitors are named in the answers instead. That analysis is specific to your domain.

All markets · The AI Visibility Accelerator from Enginely.ai.