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At SMX Advanced yesterday, Google announced that ads are coming to the local pack. That means one of the three local results in the local pack will be an ad and local SEOs need to make sure their clients show up in the top two local results, instead of the top three.
Joy Hawkins posted about this on Google+ and said:
Well....Google just announced at SMX that the 3-pack is going to start containing an ad soon. So instead of the 3-pack it's going to be 1-ad + 2 organic listings. Yes, the ones right on Google search (not the expanded pack). Be prepared to try to get clients in the top 2 instead of the top 3!
There is a lot of concern over this news from the local SEO community. There is also discussion around this at the Local Search Forums.
Here is a mock up of how the ad may show in the local pack, at least, how I think it may show. Note; the ad label may be purple instead of green.
Forum discussion at Google+ & Local Search Forums.
Update: Joy posted a photo, bad one, on Twitter from the slides Google presented about this. Here is that photo touched up a bit:
