Google is really pushing Adwords at the moment … they’ve even got it packaged for Google Places as Adwords Express … but if you run a business that has a good ranking for a variety of terms on the Google Places results that are incorporated into the general results you need to take care.

Google encourages all their Adwords advertisers to target as many keywords as possible … if there is a keyword or keyword phrase for your particular business then you should be targeting it with Adwords or Adwords Express according to Google

What they don’t tell is that if you happen to target a keyword phrase in Adwords Express that you already have a good listing for in Google Places you may well lose your ranking in Google Places. A number of people have seen it happen to them or their clients.

So if John from John’s Gardening Service … who just happens to have the top listing for ‘gardening services’ in the Google Places 7 pack were to target that phrase in Adwords Express he would quite possibly lose his listing in Google Places.

That means that instead of getting something for free he has to pay … and compete in a bidding war for that top spot.

You can read more about it at Understanding Google Maps & Local Search