DXL - 2:57 am on Jan 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Which can be gamed by those who want to.

That's debatable. In November when we were discussing ways to improve how one shows up on the local business results, I started following a few suggestions. The biggest was getting myself included on a variety of local directories, especially those that I noticed high-ranking local competitors were in. At that time I wasn't showing on the initial local results page in the SERPs, but a week ago, I managed to land myself the top spot.

After a few days, I completely vanished from the local results altogether. I'm not sure if this is related, but this coincides with the timing of changing locations within the same city (the main phone number changed, but the old number still redirects to the new one).