Missing from local search?

In the past, my colleague Chris Kenney has discussed the importance of search marketing and also the importance of local search. But what do you do if you aren’t showing up in a local search?

In his column on AllBusiness.com, Frank Ross outlines an effective alternative to get your name out to potential customers if the local search isn’t working:

In that case, try Google Adwords with location specific keywords. In the above example “seattle scuba classes”, there was only one paid ad next to the Google Local results that showed up and that was for a dating service (a bit of a stretch if you ask me). That means there is no competition for that term in Google Adwords. Therefore, if you do provide dive lessons in Seattle, you won’t pay very much for clicks on your ad.

Is this something that you have experienced in the past? If so, how did you overcome it?