Local SEO is alive and essential for any business with a physical presence or service area. The fundamentals—Google Business Profile optimization, NAP consistency, local citations, and review acquisition—still directly influence rankings in the local pack and map results that appear for high-intent searches like "lawyer near me" or "plumber Ottawa." If anything, local has gotten harder because Google keeps tightening verification requirements and pushing more sophisticated signals like service area boundaries and category specificity. What has changed is the noise level. More businesses claim profiles, more fake reviews pollute the ecosystem, and Google's algorithm weighs behavioral signals like click-through rate and user engagement more heavily than five years ago. You can't just stuff keywords in your business description anymore. You need real reviews from real customers, actual photos of your location or work, and consistent posting to signal you're an active business. Categories matter more than most people realize—picking the wrong primary category can tank your visibility for your core service. For service-area businesses without storefronts, like HVAC companies or mobile mechanics, local SEO has actually become more important. Google lets you define service areas without showing your home address, but you need a verified profile and strong citation signals to rank in those areas. We see this constantly in Ottawa—contractors who skip GBP optimization lose half their lead volume to competitors who take it seriously. The myth that local SEO is dead usually comes from business owners who tried basic optimization five years ago and assume it still works. They ignore profile updates, let reviews stagnate, and wonder why a competitor with worse branding outranks them. The discipline isn't dead; lazy execution just doesn't cut it anymore. If you serve a local market—whether you're a dentist in Toronto or a landscaper covering the National Capital Region—ignoring local SEO means leaving revenue on the table.