Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, HomeStars and Amazon.ca ranked for a Canadian business by what each is worth showing up on

None of these five replaces Google for a Canadian business, and ranking them on one scale is how a budget gets wasted. They are five jobs. Google is where intent already exists. HomeStars is where a Canadian home services buyer compares and where trust is manufactured or lost. Amazon.ca is where a physical product transaction happens, with the comparison grid as its hidden cost. LinkedIn is the only one that reaches a named job title at a named company size, which makes it a business to business instrument. Facebook creates demand for something nobody was looking for. The right order depends on which of three shapes your business is, and the order matters more than the ranking.

The order to buy them in, by business shape

Rank	Home or trade services	Physical product	Business to business
1	Google, including the business profile	Amazon.ca, where the transaction is	Google, on high intent commercial terms
2	HomeStars, where the category is strong in Canada	Google, for the branded and comparison searches Amazon creates	LinkedIn, for reach before intent exists
3	Facebook, for local awareness at a tight radius	Facebook, for demand creation and retargeting	Canadian trade press and directories, which is where the engines look
4	Amazon.ca, only if you also sell a product	HomeStars, only if you install what you sell	Facebook, for retargeting and little else
5	LinkedIn, for hiring and partnerships	LinkedIn, for hiring	Amazon.ca, for almost nothing unless you sell through it

What each one costs a Canadian business to show up on

• Google. Two unrelated costs. Organic is pages, technical health and citations, and in Canada it includes correct en-CA and fr-CA declarations. Paid is the auction, which varies sharply between a Toronto and a smaller market catchment.
• HomeStars. A listing plus a review operation. The review half is the real cost, and it is ongoing rather than a project.
• Amazon.ca. Referral fees, fulfilment, advertising, and the comparison grid, which puts your product beside substitutes at the moment of decision. Price that in before treating it as pure incremental revenue.
• LinkedIn. The highest cost per click of the five in most Canadian business to business categories, and the only one that reaches a defined title at a defined company size. Worth it above a certain deal value and poor value below it.
• Facebook. Cheap reach, expensive attribution. Buy it as demand creation measured on a holdout or on total revenue, not on last click.

The Canadian rules that touch all five

Reviews and claims are the common thread. The Competition Act's misleading representations provisions, administered by the Competition Bureau and amended in 2024, govern advertising claims and reach reviews and testimonials presented in a misleading way, with a private right of access to the Competition Tribunal for certain deceptive marketing conduct arriving in June 2025. That lands hardest on HomeStars and Amazon.ca, where review volume is a ranking input. Never buy reviews, never solicit them from staff or family without disclosure, and keep the substantiation for any performance claim before the ad runs.

Two more. If any of these surfaces feeds an email or messaging programme, CASL requires consent, clear sender identification and a working unsubscribe honoured promptly, with the CRTC enforcing. And advertising into Quebec engages the Charter of the French Language, strengthened by the 2022 amendments, which sets requirements for commercial advertising and public communications in that province, so a Facebook or Google campaign targeted at Quebec needs French creative rather than an English asset with a translated headline.

The sixth surface, which takes no advertising

On 22 October 2026 we put a 198 question Canadian buyer bank to the ChatGPT and Gemini product surfaces through a data provider, with Canada named inside the text of each question because the provider accepts gl, hl and location parameters and ignores all three. Batch 33 names us in the question and measures a ceiling, excluded from every figure. Across 64 blind Canadian readings the engines produced 2,992 citation URLs on 974 distinct hosts.

Of the five platforms in this page's title, only Google's own properties appeared near the top of that list, and they led it: developers.google.com in 17 readings, support.google.com in 14 and blog.google in 8. The rest of the top was Canadian city and commercial domains plus federal properties: torontoseo.com in 13 readings, clutch.co in 12, canadacreate.com in 11, canada.ca in 10, wisemedia.io in 9, competition-bureau.canada.ca in 9, ised-isde.canada.ca in 9, www150.statcan.gc.ca in 8 and ottawaseo.com in 7. HomeStars, Amazon.ca, LinkedIn and Facebook did not appear near the top of a Canadian supplier question's citation list at all.

So a Canadian platform strategy built only on the five named surfaces leaves this queue unaddressed, and it is a queue where 33 of the 64 readings named no supplier at all. One entry in the raw host data, ccn.web.tr, is the data provider's own fetch infrastructure rather than a publisher and is excluded from the list above.

How to decide this quarter

• Name your business shape and buy in that column's order rather than funding all five thinly.
• Test HomeStars' weight in your own category and city before funding it, because its influence varies.
• Measure Facebook on a holdout or total revenue, never on last click.
• Price LinkedIn against your deal value, not against its cost per click.
• Add one line for the sixth surface. Twelve buyer questions, both engines, Canada named in the text, saved with sources.

If your shape is home or trade services in a specific Canadian city, the local market structure and rules a good supplier knows are set out in the Canadian rules a good agency already knows. If it is a physical product, the file that tells shopping agents what your store sells now matters alongside Amazon, and it is explained in what the file tells AI shopping agents.

Questions Canadian businesses ask about the five platforms

Can I skip Google and win on the others?

In almost no Canadian category. Even where the transaction happens on Amazon.ca, the comparison and the brand check happen on Google, and the assistants cite Google's own properties more than anything else.

Is HomeStars worth managing?

In the categories and cities where it carries weight, yes, with the listing treated as free and the review operation as the real cost. Test before advertising on it.

Does LinkedIn work for a Canadian trade business?

Rarely for selling, often for hiring and partnerships. Budget it from the recruiting line and the decision becomes easy.

Should a Canadian brand on Amazon.ca also run its own store?

Yes, for margin and for the customer relationship, and expect the own store to be found through Google and increasingly through shopping agents.

Which of the five do the assistants read?

On our Canadian reading, Google's documentation and support properties heavily, directories moderately, and the other four barely at all in the context of a supplier question.

The Canadian surface that sells no placement

Four of the five platforms above will sell you reach. The assistant queue will not, and on our Canadian reading it named no supplier in 33 of 64 cases while leaning on federal properties and city specific domains. AI Knows Us reads ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews with Canada named inside the question, records every cited host, reports each engine separately with its denominator, and keeps the raw answer text. Outside the United States and the United Kingdom the cheapest plan that reads all five engines is Growth at 199 dollars a month, read on aiknowsus.com/pricing on 22 October 2026.