What actually died
Thin informational content. "What is a heat pump," "how often should I service my car," "signs you need a new roof" — those queries increasingly get answered above the links, and the sites that lived on that traffic have been hit hard.
If your content strategy was built on ranking for questions, that strategy is in trouble. That is a real change and it is worth being honest about.
What did not
Local commercial intent. When someone needs a provider near them, the answer is not a paragraph — it is a business, a rating, a distance, and a phone number. Those come from listings, profiles, and reviews.
Answer engines also cite sources, and for local queries the things they cite are structured business data and review platforms. Being the business that gets named requires the same fundamentals as before.
The three things that still work
A complete, accurate, actively maintained business profile — categories, services, hours, service area, photos, and posts. It remains the highest-leverage free asset in local marketing.
A steady flow of recent reviews. Recency matters more than volume, and reviews are increasingly what both humans and machines use to rank credibility.
Pages about specific services in specific places. Not generic service pages — pages that match what someone in a particular county actually types. These rank because they are specific, and they convert because they are relevant.
What to stop investing in
Blog posts written to rank for informational keywords with no commercial intent. Keyword-stuffed service pages. Directory link building. Content volume for its own sake.
The returns on those were declining before answer engines and are worse now.
The honest limitation
Local organic search is a slow asset. It compounds, it does not spike, and it will not fill your calendar next week.
Which is why it belongs alongside paid rather than instead of it. Paid buys this month; organic lowers what next year costs.