Measured Benchmarks by Market and Rank Band
Every figure is observed from the businesses ranked in a real July 2026 grid measurement, not modelled. The category line reports only the profiles whose primary category we could read, and says how many that was.
Plumbing
Primary category used by the ranked businesses: Plumber (18). Read on 18/25 profiles.
Law
Primary category used by the ranked businesses: Law firm (12), Personal injury attorney (1). Read on 13/25 profiles.
Dentistry
Primary category used by the ranked businesses: Dentist (8). Read on 8/25 profiles.
Read the gap between the bands before you plan anything. In plumbing, the top five hold a median of 1,687 reviews while ranks 16 to 25 hold 107. Rating barely separates them, because almost everyone sits between 4.7 and 5.0. Review volume separates them.
How to Use These Benchmarks
Set a review target that is grounded in your market
A goal of one hundred reviews means something different in each category. In Edmonton plumbing the top five hold a median of 1,687 while ranks sixteen to twenty-five hold 107. Pick the band you are attacking and aim at its median, not at a generic number.
Stop competing on rating alone
Across all three markets nearly every ranked business sits between 4.7 and 5.0. Rating is table stakes. Review volume, recency and the answers in your responses are what separate the bands.
Choose your primary category deliberately
Your primary Google Business Profile category is one of the strongest map-pack inputs. The businesses actually ranking here overwhelmingly use the plain category name rather than a niche variant, which is worth checking before you get clever.
Judge whether the map is winnable at all right now
If you have forty reviews and the cell leaders have three thousand, the honest plan starts with a review system and the open cells, not with a content campaign aimed at the leaders.
Use the gap to size the work
The distance between your review count and the band median is the clearest single number for how long a map-pack campaign will take, because reviews accumulate at a rate your business can actually estimate.
Re-check after every quarter
Benchmarks move as competitors collect reviews too. A target set once and never re-measured slowly becomes wrong, which is why we re-run the roster on a dated schedule.
Where these benchmarks sit in our method
Benchmarks come out of the competitor half of the baseline. They tell you what the current holders carry, which is the diagnosis step before any execution begins.
- The Edmonton SEO Audit: produces these benchmarks for your own market and names the competitors behind every number
- SEO for Plumbers in Edmonton: shows what the 4.86-star paradox looks like in full: a top-rated market whose complaint file is all about billing
- SEO for Law Firms in Edmonton: shows the review-mass gap between the map winners and the organic winners in one market
- The Map Pack Reach Estimator: shows where those ranked businesses actually hold ground, cell by cell
- White Glove SEO Management: manages the Google Business Profile directly and re-measures the roster every month
Want This Run on Your Own Business?
The tool above works on the markets we have already measured. The paid work points the same instruments at yours: your grid, your keyword set, your named competitors, re-measured on a dated schedule so movement is provable rather than claimed.
These bands came from rostering every ranked business in three markets, one by one. Building that roster is the second stage of local SEO in Edmonton as we practise it, and it is what a benchmark has to rest on to mean anything.