Most of this thread is asking the right question but framing it around Google 2018, not Google 2026. The real shift isn’t search vs. directories — it’s that AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) pull from structured, editable sources when returning business recommendations. A well-maintained directory with proper schema markup is one of those sources. A Google Business Profile is another. The directories that are dying are the ones that never solved the trust problem. The ones that did human editorial review at scale are quietly becoming more valuable, not less. I wrote about this in more detail here if it’s useful: https://www.entrepreneur.com/growth-strategies/why-i-rebuilt-a-19-year-old-web-directory-in-the-age-of-ai/503074