Testing and measuring HVAC marketing in British Columbia

Two markets inside one province

The Lower Mainland and southern Vancouver Island hold most of BC's households, from Vancouver, Surrey and Burnaby to Richmond, Coquitlam and Saanich. Search volume there is high enough that classic split tests are often practical for busy service pages.

The Interior, with Kelowna as its largest city, and the North behave differently: fewer searches, sharper cold-weather spikes, and more long-distance service calls. Companies there usually need the low-volume designs described in testing with few calls.

What BC's fuel mix means for which pages to test

According to Statistics Canada's household heating survey, 42% of BC households used natural gas and 36% used electricity as their primary heating energy in 2023. That is an unusually even split.

For testing, it means:

• gas furnace and boiler pages can carry enough volume to test in the metro
• heat-pump pages have a large potential audience among electrically heated homes
• a single "heating" landing page often serves two different buyers, which is itself a testable hypothesis: split it by fuel and measure qualified calls

Choosing test windows on the coast and in the Interior

On the coast, heating demand rises gradually and the wet season matters as much as the cold. Stable windows are mid-winter, when demand is steady, and late spring for heat-pump cooling messages. The first frost is less of a cliff than on the Prairies, but autumn still shifts the mix of callers.

In the Interior and North, demand spikes faster with cold snaps. Use concurrent splits where traffic allows, and a demand index such as Search Console impressions where it does not, as explained in seasonality controls.

Programs that act as confounders

As of October 2026, BC's rebate landscape changed mid-year, which matters for any heat-pump test:

• The CleanBC Better Homes Energy Savings Program, the income-qualified stream, introduced new requirements for invoices dated on or after 6 July 2026. Some rebates were removed and some upgrade paths were narrowed.
• The Home Renovation Rebate Program is still listed for households that are not income-qualified, but its current amounts were not confirmed in the sources we use.

Program pages change, so confirm details with Better Homes BC before mentioning any rebate in an ad or page variant. For test design, the rule is simple: note every program date that falls inside your window, and do not read a heat-pump test across one.

Regulators to know

We link these for reference only and do not give compliance advice:

• Technical Safety BC is the licensing body for gas and electrical contractors, and its remit also covers boilers and refrigeration.
• WorkSafeBC is the workers' compensation board.
• Consumer Protection BC handles consumer protection matters.

How we approach a BC testing program

1. Segment by climate zone in GA4 and Google Ads before reading any result.
2. Separate fuel-specific pages so gas and heat-pump buyers are measured apart.
3. Log program dates in the test plan, starting with the July 2026 CleanBC change.
4. Pick the design by volume: classic splits in the metro, switchbacks or holdouts elsewhere.

BC is home to one of the results from our HVAC work: GasBoilers.ca, a gas-boiler division serving 26+ BC communities; see results. To plan a BC test, see measurement setup or call, text or email.