Optimizing for Google Places

[Rlilly]

When searching in major metropoltian areas, listing 4 though 7 are feed from google places. These listing are a powerfull as regular listings. I notice some dont have offices in the "place" which was searched.

Any tips on how to optimize so ones site comes up?

[anallawalla]

At a simplistic level, you first need to SEO those pages for those locations so that they would have ranked on page 1 in the old SERPs. Then you have to ensure that their Place Pages are optimised. I believe those two ingredients are necessary to have the result you seek.

Sites that previously ranked only in the 7-pack but not the organic first page have largely disappeared from page 1.

[Robert Charlton]

I notice some dont have offices in the "place" which was searched.

This is likely to change.

I believe Google wants an actual physical presence with customer interaction at the specified locations. It's got to be obvious to Google that, because of the more prominent local listings, these listings are something lots of folks are going to try to game.

listing 4 though 7 are feed from google places

The positions of the places, I'm anticipating, are also likely to vary as Google tests different configurations. See extensive recent discussion...

Google Place Search - Maps now above right hand Adwords column
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4223031.htm [webmasterworld.com]

In many cases, btw, the place doesn't have to be included in the query. Google either uses searcher-preference or IP data.

Also, there are some types of searches, including highly general one-word searches, where local business would not normally rank on page one organically, but which do profit from their local presence in the new Google display. Discussion here....

Brands, Stores, Types - Related Searches expand
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4224193.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Actually, there are not any small online ecommerce stores on a one-word term like this for quite a few pages down, so you might say that Google is giving a few spots to the small guy in the first page Place listings.