Help, I am in Local Search Results!

[Discountvc]

I do not know what to do with this... and could use a bit of advice on this issue:

"Doing things right", resulted in great organic rankings and a bonus by showing top of local search results for our area. Sounds great... until Google decides it was time to mix things up a little.

I do not know if this applies to all types of businesses, but for ours it means that you will no longer get any organic page 1 listing if you are a local business that (un)luckily ranks in local results too.

One day G will include local results on a keyword, the next they won't... making our SEOMoz Campaign rankings weekly a true yo-yo of "50 keywords declined by >48 and >49 places", and "30 keywords improved by <47 and <49". It turned this feature in campaigns completely useless for me (ever since SEOMoz decided to include the local result light bulb that is)

Some traffic dropped from 240 a day for one keyword, to 30 now for that same keyword. Frustrated? You bet. I do not understand why Google seems to create a war with local businesses.

Should we get out of Local results or does anyone have any ideas, suggestions?

Thanks a bunch guys!

[riplash]

No ideas or suggestions, I'm afraid, but I've noticed this too for some searches. Only seems to have started happening recently.

[JustDucky]

Riplash & PVB : Thanks for sharing your observation about local.    2 - 3 months ago, I joined a thread and asked whether anyone thought optimizing for local would decrease national search SERP rankings and no one seemed to think it would.  My main site got mauled by B&W critters in April.  So, if I set up a new site to replace it, I'll set up a micro-site optimized for local and move the good local links there rather than to any replacement non-localized site.  Again, thanks for sharing this useful info.