GP vs. site rental

I have been looking into the "rank site -> rent out to local business" method and I am slightly confused about something: obviously, the top results are going to be Google Places listings. Is it even worth it nowadays to go after e.g. "dentist <city>"? The way I understand it, I can at most get to the middle of the page(i.e. the first web result), untill I get a real business associated with the site.

With proper SEO one was able to outrank Google Places. After this recent Penguin update, who knows. Go after whatever you think is more profitable to you.

I've just checked a few searches like this. I got the following results:
Top 3 - 3 web pages
Next 7 - google places
Then 7 web pages.

So if you could make to the top 3 you're still good. It depends on the query though.

D.

Yeah, after I read your post just now I checked other search terms. This actually seems to be the norm. But none of the results (of those searhces) seem optimized in any way, while for the SERP that only had GP at the top, the top GP listing was mildly optimized. So that might be the deciding factor. I guess what I should take away from this is that you just have to be better and Google will put you at the top.