Being involved in a business that deals in what I call 'intensely local' websites (many of our customers pull from a radius of less than 20 miles, some have business jurisdictions that are fractions of that). When you look at the accuracy of your average Google Local or Superpages search, it's not bad, but I'm amazed on a daily basis how many businesses simply haven't taken advantage of putting their URL, or even correcting their business information in Google or any of the other online directories.

Imagine my surprise when I was doing some research for an upcoming seminar, trying to highlight our local Internet prowess, only to find out that our own Chamber of Commerce has one major flaw with it's Google Local listing... It's LINKED TO ANOTHER WEBSITE! Now, it's not all bad, at least the link goes to the local newspaper, and the chamber listing does show up in the organic search as the first listing (one would hope that it should), but nonetheless, the URL is wrong in the listing.

Don't bother contacting them, I already have. However, it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to correct it. This reminds me of a presentation I saw recently over at MarketingProfs where Stephan Spencer and Brian Klais of NetConcepts mentioned a local hospital which has some material that was commented out which said something like "Jack designed this website with a swiss-army knife and a pack of gum" or something like that... The point is, you can't put your 'stuff' out on the Internet and then go on vacation.

ACTION ITEM: Go Google yourself. Then, check the local directories. If anything about your information is incorrect or incomplete, get it corrected. If your URL is not listed, but it could be, get it in there...
> Google Local
> Superpages.com
> Yellowpages.com
> Yahoo Local
> Your listing on websites in your local area...

My guess - it will take 6 week to 6 months to correct. Thats the nature of the Google Beast.

But you do have an excellent point about people not taking full advantage of Local Search. Its becoming more and more popular with the engines and as personalized searching increases - so will the prevalence of local search. So if you or your company has a incorrect listing - the time is ripe to fix it.

It will be interesting to see the metrics for whether or not people are clicking more frequently on local search/ppc/ or the regular organic listings. I would imagine, at least in the early stages while people are getting used to it - local search will get a lot of clicks.