The Sad Side of Non Advertising

I lived in a pretty small southern town for a while. Five years to be precise. Five years and two months to be really precise--but who's counting?
Anyway it was really kitschy down there, I loved it. It was a very strange place in some ways. I can see why many of the great American writers and artists emerge from that part of the country. It's steeped in American history and slavery and civil rights struggles and even still today, there is a lot of racial tension in some places and violent crime and Atlanta is actually a really mean city--unless you're talking about living in Buckhead and then it's all new construction and niceness, mostly.
But in Augusta, that's two hours east of Atlanta, there's a strange phenomenon and it's not like anything I've ever seen before. The closing of small good restaurants. It's like there are chains of really bad places to eat and then there are just a few good places and everytime I latch onto a good place to eat or discover it, the place shuts down.
I wonder if it's advertising. Perhaps these folks don't know about SEO partners and Google search. Or maybe they're shut down because of unsanitary conditions. But it's strange. They seem clean and the food is always good.