In any case, Google will become less and less important as social media such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. become the dominant way people share information. They are doing an end run around Google – providing direct traffic from real users rather than indirect traffic filtered through Google’s search criteria. Marketers have become so used to the SEO approach to traffic generation that they find it difficult to get past that way of looking at the issue.

Solid points– most of us know about Google Map spam and jamming fake results into searches. The engines have publicly stated that they are relying more on offline proof– actual directory listings and verifications to determine local legitimacy. Trust is more important, measured by links from trusted domains and pagerank, to some extent. You should consider tools like SEOmoz Pro if you haven’t already, to monitor trust being passed by inbound links to your sites. For example, rickhendershot.com has toolbar PR0, but could be a PR3 or PR4 from a PR5 inbound link.

Love to hear more about what you’re doing in the local space!