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Diego Aguirre
Diego Aguirre

Posted on • Originally published at dev.to

I Scraped 10 London HVAC Businesses—Here's What the Data Revealed

I Scraped 10 London HVAC Businesses—Here's What the Data Revealed

Last week I pulled 10 active HVAC businesses from London's Google Maps ecosystem—phones verified, websites live, addresses current. Not a marketing experiment. Just raw data to see what patterns emerge when you actually look at how these operators run.

What surprised me most wasn't the business model (it's straightforward: seasonal demand, high call volume, tight margins). It was how much variance existed in how they communicate their value. Some look like 2003. Others run tight digital operations. All of them are profitable. That disconnect matters if you're thinking about outreach.

Here's what I found.

The Review Count Tells a Specific Story

HVAC in London isn't a category where 50 reviews is the norm. Most established operators sit between 20–80 reviews on Google. A few outliers hit 150+.

That middle tier—40 to 70 reviews—clusters around 4.6 to 4.8 stars. It's the sweet spot. They've been doing this long enough to accumulate real feedback, but they're not so large that reviews become noise.

What matters: a business with 45 reviews and 4.7 stars has survived multiple winters, handled emergency calls, managed crew scheduling, and still kept customers happy enough to leave written feedback. In HVAC, that's a competence signal.

The low-review outliers (8–15 reviews) tended to be either newer operators or sole traders branching into service. Some of these are worth watching—less operational overhead, faster decision-making. But they also carry risk if you're planning a campaign that depends on consistent capacity.

Website Investment Varies Wildly

Six of the ten had a proper website (domain + basic service breakdown). Four relied almost entirely on Google Business Profile as their web presence.

The ones with websites? They weren't flashy. No animations, no "premium HVAC solutions for the discerning homeowner." They were functional: service menu, service area map, phone number in three places, customer photos of installations, maybe a blog post about boiler maintenance from 2021.

The four running Google-only operations had solid profiles—clear photos, service descriptions, response times logged. But zero ability to own the conversation beyond Google's interface. No email capture, no way to build a list, no blog to rank for "boiler replacement cost London."

This is a real split in how London HVAC operators think about digital. Half still build platforms they control. Half optimize for the platform that sends them leads (Google).

Call Patterns and Response Windows

I didn't call them (that wasn't the point of this pull), but the metadata told the story. Average response time on Google Business was 2–4 hours during business days. One operator averaged responses within 90 minutes.

That operator had four reviews in the last month. The slower ones had been quiet for 6–8 weeks between reviews.

Speed correlates with volume. If you're fielding 15 calls a day, you're probably answering emails slowly. If you're getting three calls a week, you can afford to be responsive.

For outreach purposes, this matters. A operator drowning in work is less likely to take a cold call about a software solution or partnership. One running leaner might.

Geographic Clustering and Service Area Assumptions

Eight of the ten served roughly the same footprint: North London, Hackney, Islington, parts of Highbury. Two covered South London and Croydon.

None of them claimed to serve "all of London." Every profile was explicit: "We serve North London and surrounding areas" or "Croydon and South East London."

This isn't caution. It's operational reality. HVAC is dispatch-heavy. Sending a van to Croydon from Hackney kills margins. The tight service areas reflect how these businesses actually run.

If you're thinking about geographic expansion, this is what real data says about the market: operators are hyper-local. They succeed by owning a small footprint and executing well in it.

The Cold Call Script Problem

Here's the tension I noticed: every one of these operators needs something (CRM integration, dispatch routing, lead scoring, better Google ranking), but the default cold approach—"I can get you more leads"—doesn't land because they're already busy.

The angle that might work: "I've analyzed your service area, response times, and review velocity. Here's one operational bottleneck I spotted." Specific. Grounded. Built on actual data, not guessing.

A generic "your business would benefit from our platform" pitch gets deleted. One that says, "Operators in your segment are averaging 48 hours to respond to email inquiries, and you're at 22 hours—here's how that compounds to more bookings"—that gets a callback.

What This Means for Outreach

The pattern underneath all of this: London HVAC operators are running tight, local, profitable businesses. They're not early adopters. They're not looking for hype. They're looking for operational levers that move the needle without adding complexity.

If you're selling to them, the sell needs to be grounded in what you've actually observed about their operation, not what you assume about their pain.

That's harder than spray-and-pray outreach. It's also why it works.


If you're building a campaign around HVAC businesses in this market, having verified operator data—phones that connect, websites that load, review counts that reflect real traction—changes how you approach the conversation. You're not guessing. Here's a pack of 10 verified London HVAC leads with cold-call scripts and operational profiles for each—enough to spot your own patterns and test whether the angle lands.

The real work is always in the research before the outreach.


Want the ready-to-use pack instead of building this yourself? → https://autosites.vercel.app/g/lead-pack-london-uk-hvac-en

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