What is the pattern across all five Vancouver studies?

That the competitor taking the gap is frequently not a competing business. Physiotherapy loses its coverage question to the Government of BC, Canada Life and a US digital-health company that operates no clinics. Legal loses a quarter of its answer to a directory with no published address, two legal-education charities and a US state law library. Accounting loses a third to Reddit, national chains and thirteen citations' worth of charities running free tax clinics. None of those is defending a client relationship, which is why the openings are unusually clean.

Why is British Columbia treated differently in the method?

Because two of its institutions have no equivalent in our other metros. MSP is the provincial health insurer and its coverage rules are narrow and widely misunderstood, so the physiotherapy coverage question had to be asked against MSP rather than OHIP or Alberta Health Care. And in BC, notaries public may lawfully handle residential conveyancing, which makes them direct competitors on the legal real-estate question — a category that does not exist in Toronto, Ottawa or Calgary. Both are reported explicitly rather than absorbed into a neighbouring column.

Why does the listing share vary so much between sub-markets?

We do not know why Google fills Business Profile panels in some places and not others, and we will not speculate. The measurement is stark and consistent across verticals: Vancouver proper returned zero listing citations for cosmetic surgery and dentistry, while Surrey returned 40 and 20 respectively. North Vancouver returned 33 in the legal study, the most of any sub-market in any city we have measured. Practically it means a Business Profile is worth very different amounts depending on where your patients or clients search from.

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 Ottawa and the Calgary region on the same days as these. The dental and physiotherapy studies print those comparisons directly — Vancouver physiotherapy holds 67% of its own market, Calgary 52% and Ottawa 31%.

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 regional boundaries — hold up far better than individual counts.

Market · Metro Vancouver

What Google's AI Recommends Across Metro Vancouver

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

Metro Vancouver produced both the strongest and the weakest local positions in the series. What separates them is rarely another business: it is a government, an insurer, a charity or a directory with no address.

Compare the five The studies Method

5 studies7 sub-markets1289 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 region show

Metro Vancouver holds both the strongest local position we have measured anywhere — 67% in physiotherapy — and the weakest, at 26% in accounting. The same city, the same week, the same instrument. What you sell decides how much of the answer is yours.

Studies in this market: 5 Studies in this market
Queries run: 105 Queries run
Citations captured: 1289 Citations captured
Metro Vancouver businesses named: 239 Metro Vancouver businesses named

What does this page cover?

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

105 queries run with city-level location targeting
1289 citations captured and classified by hand
239 Metro Vancouver businesses named across the five leaderboards
Coverage questions localised to BC — MSP rather than OHIP or Alberta Health Care
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 a business outside the region.

Market	To local websites	Businesses cited	Google listings	From outside the region	What it means
Physiotherapy	67%	80	12%	2%	Best-defended market in the series. The competitor is the province, not another city.
Dental	53%	70	30%	8%	Google returned no answer at all for CDCP in four of seven sub-markets.
Legal	38%	41	29%	7%	A directory with no published address out-cites every firm in the city.
Cosmetic surgery	30%	16	41%	20%	Only 16 clinics cited, three holding 53% of local citations.
Accounting	26%	32	0%	31%	Weakest local position anywhere. The most-cited firm is in Calgary.

The remaining share in each row goes to sources that are not providers — government, insurers, ICBC, forums, realtors, charities, financing companies and directories — and, in legal, to BC notaries public, who may lawfully handle residential conveyancing and are reported as their own category. Each study states its own accounting in full.

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 Metro Vancouver sub-markets. 70 practices named — and Google returned no AI Overview at all for the Canadian Dental Care Plan question in four of seven sub-markets.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Legal 21 client-intent fee queries across seven Metro Vancouver sub-markets and three practice areas. 41 firms named — and a directory that publishes no address of its own out-cites every one of them.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Physiotherapy 21 patient-intent queries across seven Metro Vancouver sub-markets and three patient questions. 80 clinics named and 67% of citations held locally — the strongest local position in the series.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Accounting 21 client-intent fee queries across seven Metro Vancouver sub-markets and three services. 32 firms named, only 26% of citations reaching one — and the most-cited firm in the answers is in Calgary.	August 2, 2026	Read the study
Cosmetic surgery 21 patient-intent cost queries across seven Metro Vancouver sub-markets and three procedures. Only 16 local clinics cited, three of them holding 53% of local citations, and 41% of citations pointing at Google listings.	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 — Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Langley.
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

Localised the coverage questions to British Columbia — MSP rather than the Ontario or Alberta schemes used in our other studies — because a coverage question answered against the wrong province measures nothing.
STEP 04

Captured the complete search result page for each query, including the AI Overview block, its generated text, and every source it cited.
STEP 05

Opened every cited provider domain individually and read its published address from the business's own contact page. Victoria, Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Quesnel and Nanaimo are in British Columbia but outside Metro Vancouver, and are named rather than folded in.
STEP 06

De-duplicated citations per answer, and counted Google Business Profile panels separately because they carry no publisher domain.

The 7 Sub-Markets

Every Metro Vancouver study was run against the same list: Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Langley. Sub-market labels follow Google's own location targeting rather than municipal boundaries.

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

The core and the suburbs behave like different markets. Vancouver, Richmond and North Vancouver returned no Google Business Profile citations at all in the dental study, while Surrey, Coquitlam and Langley returned 62 between them; in the legal study North Vancouver alone returned 33. A single region-wide figure would hide that entirely.

Questions About the Vancouver 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.