We ran a 1,260-point Google Map Pack rank-tracking grid across 14 Ottawa neighborhoods and 7 service categories (plumbing, HVAC, roofing, family law, dentistry, real estate, accounting) over a 30-day window in April 2026. This is the most granular public look at how Ottawa Map Pack rankings actually behave by neighborhood and category that we're aware of.
We deployed a 90-point geo-grid (9x10) across each of the 14 neighborhoods using Local Falcon and supplemental manual rank-checks. Each grid was queried for 7 service-category seed terms (e.g. 'plumber near me', 'family lawyer'). Tracking ran daily for 30 days from April 1 to April 30, 2026. Position 1-3 was counted as 'in the Map Pack'; positions 4-20 were tracked but excluded from the headline visibility metric. We excluded sponsored Local Service Ads from rank counts.
Median Ottawa Map Pack rank changes by 4.2 positions when the searcher moves from one neighborhood to an adjacent one — proximity still dominates.
Kanata, Barrhaven, and Orléans behave like distinct local markets — a downtown-listed business almost never appears in the top 3 for these grids unless it has an explicit location page.
Plumbing and HVAC have the most volatile Map Pack (avg. ±3 position swings week-over-week); dentistry and accounting are the most stable.
Businesses with a service-area profile + neighborhood landing pages outrank single-location competitors by an average of 1.8 Map Pack positions across non-home neighborhoods.
Review velocity (reviews-in-last-90-days) correlates 0.62 with Map Pack rank in our sample — stronger than total review count (0.41).
Glebe, Westboro, and Centretown share more Map Pack overlap than any other Ottawa neighborhood cluster — effectively one local market for SEO purposes.
The single most decisive variable in our dataset is the searcher's neighborhood — not the service category, not the business's review count, not even the business's primary GBP category. A plumber listed in Westboro almost never ranks top-3 in Orléans regardless of how many reviews they have. The Map Pack is fundamentally a proximity-and-prominence machine, with proximity weighted heavier than most operators assume.
We identified 47 businesses across our sample that held a top-3 Map Pack position across 3+ neighborhood grids consistently. Three patterns dominate: (1) they all have neighborhood-specific landing pages (not just a city-level page), (2) their review velocity is in the top 25% of their category, and (3) they have a service-area GBP profile with multiple service-area cities listed.
Plumbing, HVAC, and roofing show ±2.4 to ±3.2 position swings per week — meaning a top-3 listing on Monday can be top-7 by Friday. Dentistry and accounting are far more stable. The implication: trades businesses need to monitor and respond to Map Pack movement weekly, while professional service businesses can audit monthly.
Tier 1 neighborhoods (Centretown/Glebe/Westboro/Hintonburg) have the most competitive Map Packs — winning here requires both review velocity and content depth. Tier 2 (Kanata/Barrhaven/Orléans) rewards businesses that explicitly target the suburb with a landing page. Tier 3 (Stittsville/Manotick/Vanier/Riverside South/Greely) is still winnable with modest effort — fewer competitors are doing the basics.
When citing this study, please use: "Ottawa SEO Inc. 2026 GBP Neighborhood Study, n=264,600 ranked queries, April 2026" and link to https://ottawaseo.com/studies/ottawa-gbp-rankings-by-neighborhood-2026/.