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Insurance search in Canada: who ranks and who Google cites

This page was rebuilt in August 2026. It previously listed keyword volumes captured in 2024. It now reports live monthly measurement of the same market: who ranks, who Google cites in its AI answers, and what those searches actually return. The method is published in full on our methodology page.

We measure Canadian insurance search across six provinces and ten metros using the same searches we run in the United States. That makes the two directly comparable, and they differ in three ways worth knowing.

Canada returns fewer AI answers

MeasureCanadaUnited States
Car insurance, AI Overview rate68.4%78.6%
Car insurance, sources per answer7.96.8
Business insurance, AI Overview rate88.2%84.1%
Business insurance, sources per answer7.57.8

Car insurance searches in Canada return a written answer roughly ten points less often than the same searches in the United States, but when Google does answer, it draws on more sources.

Who Google cites in Canada

Car insurance

#CarrierCitations across six provinces
1Belairdirect29
2TD Insurance24
3Allstate17
4Intact17
5Progressive10
6RBC Insurance9
7AMA7
8Sonnet7

Business insurance

#CarrierCitations across six provinces
1TD Insurance30
2Intact29
3Co-operators18
4Chubb15
5Desjardins15
6Aviva Canada8
7AMA6
8RBC Insurance5

Belairdirect and TD Insurance lead personal lines. TD Insurance and Intact lead commercial.

Comparison sites are stronger here than in the US

In Alberta, Rates.ca and Ratehub hold the top two organic positions for car insurance, ahead of every insurer. That does not happen in any American state we measure, where a carrier leads the organic results almost everywhere.

Local is a genuinely different market

Across ten Canadian metros, the map is as concentrated as it is in the United States, but a different kind of business holds it.

Leading operatorMetros heldShare of that country’s map slots
United StatesAcceptance Insurance32 of 998.7%
United StatesFreeway Insurance35 of 995.3%
CanadaWestland Insurance3 of 1010.1%
CanadaAviva Canada3 of 104.5%

The top two operators hold 14.0% of US map slots and 14.6% of Canadian ones. Proportionally these are the same market structure.

What differs is who the operators are. The American leaders are non-standard auto storefront networks: walk-in shops selling minimum-limits policies to drivers who cannot buy elsewhere. The Canadian leaders are full-service brokerages placing personal and commercial lines. Same concentration, different business.

The rating bar is also lower. The median rating among businesses holding a Canadian insurance map slot is 4.6, against 4.9 in the United States. A brokerage at 4.7 sits above the local median in Canada and behind three quarters of the field in the US.

That gap is the clearest opportunity in this dataset for a Canadian brokerage: the same competitive concentration as the US, but a materially lower rating threshold to clear.

Method

Six provinces and ten metros, the same search sets used in the United States, captured August 2026. Provincial figures cover Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan. Metro figures cover Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Mississauga, Hamilton and Saskatoon.

August 2026 is a single capture. Three-capture medians with a published spread begin in September.

SP

Suren Pillai

Principal at Insurance SEO SEM, Calgary. Ten years in insurance search, including digital marketing roles inside AXA and Sompo and at national Canadian brokerages. Runs the monthly captures behind the Insurance Visibility Index.

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