Top-3 Map Pack appearances for high-intent Canadian queries correlate most strongly with primary-category match (r=0.71), review velocity over the trailing 90 days (r=0.62), and proximity (r=0.58) — in that order.
We ran a correlation study across 180 Canadian Map Pack rankings (six metros × five industries × six positional variants). Primary-category exact match remains the single largest factor; review velocity has overtaken raw review count since the late-2024 GBP signal weighting changes; proximity is still material but has demonstrably weakened year-over-year.
Methodology
Correlation analysis across 180 Map Pack ranking observations, Toronto / Vancouver / Calgary / Montreal / Ottawa / Edmonton, Q1 2026.
Limits of this finding
Correlation, not causation. Review-velocity signals are confounded with overall business momentum.
More Local findings
Local-service pages that name the relevant regulator (LSO for Ontario law firms, RCDSO for dentists, CPSO for physicians) outperformed peers on LLM citation in our 2026 sample.
In our healthcare and legal audit set, pages naming a regulator in the visible body were cited on 51% of probed local queries vs. 28% for matched-topic pages without a named regulator.
Canadian Google Business Profiles with 6+ owner-answered questions in the trailing 90 days had a measurable Map Pack ranking lift over zero-Q&A peers, controlling for review velocity.
Matched 36 Canadian GBP profiles into pairs by industry, review count, and review velocity. The owner-answered-Q&A cohort (median 9 answered Q's, 90 days) outranked the zero-Q&A cohort by a mean of 1.4 Map Pack positions across our probe set. Q&A velocity is currently the single most under-used GBP signal in our data.
Named-neighbourhood pages (e.g., 'Liberty Village dentist') outperformed postal-code pages by 4–6× on local pack inclusion in our Canadian audit set.
We compared 24 service-area pages built around named neighbourhoods (Liberty Village, Plateau Mont-Royal, Kitsilano, etc.) against 36 postal-code pages (M5V, H2T, V6K, etc.) on the same domains. Named-neighbourhood pages appeared in the local pack on 38% of relevant queries; postal-code pages on 7%. The named pages also held the position longer over a 6-month window.
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