I recently did a search for 'Sydney Hairdressers' in Google and 
noticed that the inclusion of a Google Map close to the top of the search results.
I then searched for 'Sydney Mechanics'. Similar result.
In fact, the following search terms resulted in a Google Map in the position of the 5th search result or higher. I've included the number of search results to indicate the popularity of these search terms.
| Search Term | Placement | # of Search Results |
| Adelaide Mechanics | 1st | 175,000 |
| Perth Chemists | 1st | 268,000 |
| Brisbane Hairdressers | 1st | 129,000 |
| Melbourne Beauty Salons | 1st | 268,000 |
So, if you are a directory/website in Australia that is in the local search space, this has serious implications. Regardless of your SEO efforts, for a popular search term, a Google Map will trump your website' in the search results!
At best, you can only hope that Google indexes the content of your local website and displays it under the 'More Information' section (which from Rave About It's perspective, is very interesting because the reviewing facility of a business is now being made more prominent - more on this later:) )
There are many other questions that this search result tweak raises about local search:
What determines whether a Google Map appears above a 'natural result' or simply as the #1 result?
Clicking on 'More Information' against a business name, results in a number of search results from a variety of sources. Is there a way that a website can optimise their content so that they appear higher in these 'More Information' results?
Will Google begin to show Google Maps Australia wide for individual businesses (as well as industry-wide results)?
Individual Business Listings
Edit (30/07)
It appears that a Google Map of an individual business listing is displayed, if a Google Search is performed for that business name (see image on right)
It definitely seems that Google are providing richer content for business listings - around 2 weeks ago, they added advertising text to business listings.
I'll be following this closely, so I might update this post in a few days.
Update # 2: Mike Blumental wrote a post about this local phenomenon occuring in Google US in May. Bill Slawski also commented that Google were doing this through Onebox, even as early as January this year, so I can't work out why they postponed the release of such a feature in Australia until now.
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