How a Local Business Gets Found Now: Search, AI Answers, and the Shift From Links to Citations

A walk through the machinery of local discovery in 2026 - the Map Pack and classic ranking, the structured data that makes a site machine-readable, Generative Engine Optimization and the llms.txt that the engines ignore - and how one Huntley, Illinois detailing shop was rebuilt to be found by both Google and the models. Where the link economy is giving way to a citation economy, and what stays the same underneath.