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You may have to look at alternatives where you can increase search visibility such as targeting keyword phrases that are not triggering local search results. Instead of focusing on popular keywords you may want to focus on longer tail keywords using Ubersuggest or Google's "Related Searches." You could answer a lot of frequently asked questions about the industry. In my experience most questions do not trigger the local search results unless they involve an element of location in the question.

nonsense. Search for https://www.google.com.au/search?q=inurl%3Arobots.txt&pws=0 Some of the first results with visible robots.txt I see are: google.com facebook.com wikipedia.com seobook.com I refuse to believe that "something is seriously wrong" with any of these sites.

Thanks for the clarification Keri. Always helps.