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Steve, if you ever figure out what the problem was, please let me know.  I've got two different client sites that have the "invalid URL" problem.  I've dug through and cleaned them both up via the usual HTML validator, thinking maybe it was some unclosed tag or something sending the parsers off into La-La Land....to no avail

Hi Gary, Ben has provided a good answer. Now, technically, you are perfectly free to link to the homepage from all of the local listings. That is in no way forbidden, but it is a preferred practice in many cases to link to a landing page for each location. Just be sure your location landing pages are strong pages (not duplicates, not with thin content, etc.). The use of landing pages is also a good place to reinforce the NAP (name, address, phone) for each unique location. They will all share the same business name, but will have unique street addresses and phone numbers, and these can be clearly listed on each respective landing page. Years ago, Eric Enge interviewed Carter Maslan on this topic, and to my mind, Carter's advice about these types of landing pages still stands: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-carter-maslan-032710.shtml Scroll down to this part and read from there: Eric Enge: Let’s say you have more than one location, 100 for example. In your view, is it helpful to have individual pages on the website for all of the locations? Also, is it helpful to have the Google local business center linked to each of those individual pages rather than having 100 locations that point to a single web address? *Note, this was published in 2010, so some of the terminology is outdated, but the main message about this particular topic is still right on. Hope this helps!