Local SEO in 2026 means making sure your business shows up when someone searches for services in a specific city or neighborhood, whether they're typing into Google, asking ChatGPT, or using voice search in their car. The mechanics have shifted from the citation-building days of 2015. Now it's about entity strength, review velocity, and feeding structured data to AI systems that generate answers without sending users to your site. The core ranking factors still include your Google Business Profile completeness, NAP consistency, and distance from the searcher. But Google's local algorithm now weighs behavioral signals more heavily: how many people request directions, call you, save your listing, or spend time on your GBP photos. We've seen clients in Ottawa jump from position 8 to the 3-pack just by getting 15 authentic reviews in 30 days with photo attachments and owner responses. What's changed is the zero-click problem. Local Pack results now show hours, services, and AI-summarized reviews right in the SERP. Your click-through rate from Maps can drop 40% even if you rank #1, because Google answered the question already. That means your GBP content, Q&A section, and service attributes need to be airtight, since that's often the only impression you get. Entity signals matter more than backlinks for local now. Schema markup, consistent mentions across directories, and a Wikipedia page or Wikidata entry all tell Google you're a real business. At Ottawa SEO, we prioritize GBP optimization, localized content hubs for each service area, and review generation over buying 200 low-quality citations. The other shift is multi-platform. People find local businesses on Apple Maps, TikTok, and Instagram just as often as Google. Your local SEO strategy in 2026 has to include those channels, not just Google My Business and Bing Places. If you're only optimizing for one search engine, you're leaving 30-40% of local discovery on the table.