Not so much a “how to” for the small business reader, but a big picture of the industry — Rachel Rosmarin writes on Forbes.com that the Local Search industry “should be booming.”

Research shop the Kelsey Group estimates the sector generated $3.4 billion last year, but it could grow to $13 billion by 2010.

(snip)

But while Google and Yahoo! dominate nearly every other part of the Web, they have yet to fill up on local-search traffic. The top five local search sites are only reaching about 55% of the general Internet audience, according to ComScore.

All of which is another way of saying that Google and Yahoo are aiming to make it easier for small businesses to jump on the Local Search train.