Are citations still worth the effort in 2026?

Been doing local SEO for service businesses and I'm questioning the ROI on citation building lately.

Back in the day, citations were huge. Now I'm seeing mixed results:

• New businesses still seem to benefit from the core 20-30 directories
• Established businesses with clean NAP rarely see ranking changes from more citations
• The aggregators (Data Axle, Neustar, Foursquare) seem more important than individual directories

What's your current approach? Still building 50+ citations for every client, or have you scaled back?

Curious what's actually moving the needle for others in 2026.