A heat wave hits on a Tuesday. Your phone is quiet, and the same three companies keep showing up in the Map Pack above you. You suspect they have more reviews or a bigger ad budget, but you don’t actually know.
This guide walks you through a Google Maps competitor analysis for HVAC that ends with a one-page scorecard. It shows why the three companies above you rank where they do, and which two or three gaps you can close first.
You’ll need a Google Business Profile you can log into, a spreadsheet, a phone with location services, and about two hours. The Map Pack, for reference, is the block of three local listings under the map at the top of many local searches.
Step 1: Define the searches and service area you are trying to win
Start with 8 to 12 phrases your customers actually type, split by intent:
- Emergency: AC not cooling, furnace not working, no heat
- Planned replacement: AC replacement cost, new furnace install
- Maintenance: AC tune-up, duct cleaning
HVAC demand swings with the weather, so mark which phrases matter this season. In October, heating queries and furnace tune-ups deserve more weight than AC repair, and a cold snap will shift that again.
Next, pick 3 to 5 towns or ZIP codes. Choose the ones that produce your best-margin jobs, not simply the closest ones. Map Pack results change block by block, so one search from your shop tells you very little about what a homeowner across town sees.
Then make a decision up front: weight replacement and install searches most heavily. A system replacement is a far bigger job than a tune-up, so a Map Pack spot on “new furnace install” is worth more than one on “duct cleaning.” Tune-ups still matter for recurring revenue, but they shouldn’t drive your priorities.
Mistake to avoid: searching from your own phone while logged into Google. Your results lean toward businesses you have visited, searched for, or clicked before, including your own. What you see is not what a new customer sees.
Step 2: Capture the real Map Pack results from your customers’ locations
Open an incognito window and set the search location to a point inside each target town. A local rank-grid tool does this automatically by checking each keyword at a grid of points. If you’d rather do it free, Chrome DevTools has a Sensors panel where you can enter custom latitude and longitude. Check tool features and pricing yourself, since they change.
For each keyword at each location, record the top three businesses in your spreadsheet: business name, position, and whether they show up for emergency terms, replacement terms, or both. Only the top three rows matter. The Map Pack draws roughly 42% of local clicks, and the listings below it get a small share of that.
Also note what sits above the map. As of 2026, Local Services Ads (the Google Guaranteed pay-per-lead listings) and sponsored placements often appear at the top of HVAC searches and push organic Map Pack listings down the screen. Layouts change often, so screenshot what you see on the day you check. That tells you how many calls are being taken before organic results even appear.
Once the sheet is filled in, look for repeats. Usually the same two or three names appear across most grid points. Those are your true competitors, and they may not be the companies you think of as rivals. The shop you always compare yourself to might barely show up, while a company two towns over owns half your service area.
If a competitor only wins near their own address and fades quickly as you move away, that is useful too. It means their position is proximity, not strength, and it is easier to beat.
Step 3: Audit each competitor’s Google Business Profile
Open each repeat competitor’s profile and fill in a row for each of these:
- Primary category (for example HVAC contractor versus Air conditioning repair service)
- Secondary categories
- Listed services and any products
- Service areas
- Business hours, and whether they show 24/7 or emergency hours
- Attributes, Q&A, and posts
- Photo count and how recent the newest photos are
The primary category is the strongest signal you give Google about what you are. Secondary categories add range but carry less weight. Category names get added, renamed, and retired, so confirm the exact names in your own profile’s category picker rather than trusting a list from an old article. The same goes for how services and hours display.
Look at the business name too. If a competitor’s name has city or service keywords added that aren’t on their truck or invoice, or the address looks like a mailbox or a coworking desk, flag it. You can report suspected name stuffing and fake addresses through Google’s profile redressal tools. But don’t build a strategy around hoping Google removes them. Reports can take a long time and sometimes go nowhere.
Now put your own profile in the same columns. Most owners find the gap isn’t effort. It’s a wrong primary category, or a services list with four items when competitors list twenty. Both take an afternoon to fix, which makes this the cheapest win in the whole analysis.
Step 4: Read the reviews for volume, recency, and what customers actually say
For each competitor, log total review count, star rating, number of reviews in the last 90 days, and whether the owner replies. Review velocity, meaning how steadily new reviews arrive, usually tells you more than a big lifetime total. A company with 400 reviews and nothing new since spring is weaker than it looks. One with 150 and a few arriving every week is actively climbing.
Then read. Take 20 to 30 reviews from each top competitor and tally recurring themes:
- Showed up the same day
- Honest quote, no upsell
- Fixed it on the first visit
- Technicians mentioned by name
- Price complaints
- No-shows or late arrivals
The positive themes tell you what customers in your market reward. Those become your messaging, and they become the prompts in your own review requests. Asking “how was the arrival time and the quote?” gets you more useful reviews than “please leave us five stars.”
Read the 1 and 2 star reviews most closely. Complaints about hidden fees, late arrival, or repairs that didn’t hold are openings. If three competitors share the same complaint, say plainly on your profile and in your ads that you quote upfront or give arrival windows.
Finally, check whether review text mentions specific services and towns, like “replaced our furnace in Lancaster.” That language helps relevance for those searches. You can encourage detail by asking customers what was done and where, but never buy reviews, offer discounts for them, or screen out unhappy customers before asking. Google’s policies prohibit fake and incentivized reviews, and the penalty can cost you the listing.
Step 5: Check the website and citation signals behind the listing
Click through from each competitor’s profile to the page it links to. Record whether it lands on a dedicated page for the service and city or just the homepage, how fast it loads on your phone over mobile data, and whether a click-to-call button is visible without scrolling. Between 40 and 70% of local leads come by phone, so a page that makes calling hard is leaking jobs. Check yours the same way.
Next, look at consistency. Search each competitor’s name, address, and phone number across major directories and HVAC-relevant sources like manufacturer dealer locators and the BBB. Then do the same for yourself. Mismatched phone numbers, an old address, or a duplicate listing under a former name are quick fixes that cost you nothing but an hour.
Note the trust markers each competitor displays:
- License numbers
- EPA 608 or NATE certification
- Manufacturer authorization or dealer status
- Financing options
- Warranty language
Licensing rules vary by state and sometimes by county, and EPA 608 certification is a federal requirement for handling refrigerants. Confirm what applies to you through your state licensing board and the EPA rather than copying what a competitor happens to display. If you hold credentials they don’t mention, that’s an easy advantage to put on your site and profile.
Mistake to avoid: burning hours in backlink tools. For this analysis, just note the obvious local links: the chamber of commerce, sponsorships of local teams, and local press mentions. If a competitor has several and you have none, add it to the scorecard and move on.
Step 6: Score the gaps and pick your first three fixes
Build the scorecard on one page. Rows are category, services listed, review count, 90-day velocity, response rate, photos, landing page, call button, and trust markers. Columns are you and each competitor. Mark every cell where you trail.
Now sort the gaps by effort and speed:
- Category and services: hours of work, and often the biggest single change.
- Review velocity: weeks, because it depends on a repeatable request process after every job.
- Landing pages: weeks to months, since each town and service needs real content.
Take a position here: don’t chase the top spot in every town. Concentrate on the towns and keywords tied to your best-margin jobs, especially replacements. A third-place listing in the right town beats a first-place listing where you don’t want to work.
If a competitor is far ahead on reviews, set a realistic horizon and don’t expect to close it in a month. Local SEO is slow. The benchmark for Local SEO cost per lead is $7 to $15, but that figure applies at 12 months or more, and paid campaigns typically take 30 to 90 days to ramp. No one can promise you a ranking, and you should be wary of anyone who does.
While organic catches up, consider covering the gap with Google Ads or Local Services Ads. For home services, plan around $18 to $35 per lead on Google Ads, which is a planning range, not a quote. Compare that against what a booked replacement is worth to you, and keep total marketing spend within the usual 8 to 12% of revenue.
Step 7: Set up a monthly re-check so you can see what is moving
Repeat the grid check once a month, using the same keywords and the same locations so the results are comparable. Log your position, each competitor’s review count, and any new names that appear. Seasonal swings are normal, so compare October to last October where you can, not to July.
Rankings are only a proxy. Track what actually pays: calls from your profile, direction requests, and booked jobs. Use call tracking where you can, and match calls to jobs in your scheduling software so you know which calls were real opportunities. A profile that climbs while booked jobs stay flat is telling you something about your phone handling or your pricing, not your visibility.
Every quarter, update the scorecard itself. Watch for a competitor adding a category, a sudden jump in reviews, or a new Local Services Ads presence. Any of these can change the picture faster than your own work does.
Finally, decide when to bring in help. If the scorecard shows gaps in several areas at once, say category, reviews, and landing pages together, an outside team can compress months of trial and error. If it shows one or two gaps, you can likely handle them yourself.
Keep the scorecard and work the top three gaps for 60 days
Hold on to the scorecard. Fix the top three gaps over the next 30 to 60 days, then re-run the grid before deciding whether to add ad spend. That order matters: you’ll know whether organic changes moved you before paying for clicks to cover the same ground.
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