Testing and measuring HVAC marketing in Alberta

Market size and what it allows

Calgary and Edmonton together, with neighbours such as Airdrie and Strathcona County (Sherwood Park), produce enough HVAC searches that busy service pages can support classic split tests. Red Deer and Lethbridge are smaller, so companies centred there usually need longer windows or the designs in testing with few calls.

The metros also make geographic holdouts possible. A company serving several Calgary-area communities can split them into matched groups, which is rarely possible in a one-town market. See holdout testing.

Fuel mix: one dominant buyer

Statistics Canada's household heating table shows 76% of Alberta households using natural gas and 14% electricity for primary heat in 2023. Furnace replacement and repair pages therefore carry most of the testable volume.

Two consequences:

• tests on furnace pages reach sample sizes faster than tests on heat-pump or boiler pages
• a heat-pump page may never reach a classic sample in a smaller city, so measure it carefully and test only bold changes

Seasonality: long winters and chinook weeks

Alberta's cold continental winters give a long, relatively stable heating period, which is good for testing repair and replacement pages in deep winter. Chinooks are the exception. Treat them like any other weather break:

1. Prefer concurrent splits so both versions see the same weather.
2. If you must compare periods, track a demand index, such as Search Console impressions for broad furnace queries.
3. Write down in advance whether chinook weeks are kept or excluded.

The general method is in seasonality controls.

Programs as of October 2026

Alberta's program picture is thin, which in one sense makes testing cleaner:

• The Clean Energy Improvement Program is financing repaid through the property tax bill, and it exists only where a municipality has opted in. A variant mentioning CEIP should run only where it applies.
• The federal Oil to Heat Pump Affordability program closed to new Alberta applicants on 31 July 2026, which matters if you compare heat-pump enquiries before and after that date.
• We found no Alberta-wide heating rebate on official sources, and on 22 October 2026 the province still had no agreement under the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program.

Confirm current details with each administrator before referencing them.

A planning example for a Calgary-area company (illustrative)

Picture a furnace company serving six Calgary-area communities, spending $5,000 a month on Google Ads, a fifth of it on brand search. The first question is whether that brand spend adds calls. Split the six communities into two matched groups of three by their call history, pause brand ads in one group for four weeks, and track qualified calls in both against the previous four weeks. Avoid starting in October, when the first sustained cold arrives, and note any chinook week in the south of the city. If calls in the paused group fall no more than in the control group, the brand budget can move to generic furnace searches. Then turn to the furnace replacement page, which has the volume for a concurrent split.

Regulators to know

For reference only; we do not give compliance advice:

• Alberta's safety codes system, including the Safety Codes Council and ABSA
• WCB-Alberta for workers' compensation
• Alberta consumer protection, relevant to how home-service offers are sold

How we approach an Alberta testing program

• Start with spend. Larger metro budgets make a brand-search or remarketing holdout a sensible first test.
• Test furnace pages first, where volume is highest.
• Plan around chinooks in the south, and around the start of the heating season everywhere.
• Measure on booked jobs, fed back to Google Ads, as described in Google Ads experiments and offline conversions.

For plans, see pricing. To discuss an Alberta test, call, text or email.