Most of us remember that chaotic day last October when map-based results stopped being just an alternative search function at Google and started impacting the organic results directly. For the first time we witnessed in the live results Google Places integration right into the organic listings and the impact of Google Places pages on those SERPs.

Google tells us that more than 20 percent of search queries have a regional specifier included in them (e.g., “lawyer seattle wa”). This means that this change is affecting a large number of queries.

In some cases we’re still seeing the old onebox result with all the Places results showing together and 10 organic results appearing below, but in many if not most cases we’re seeing a blending of the results with the map appearing to the right with the AdWords listings and Places information being included in the organic results right below the classic description.

We’ll begin this series on how to improve your organic rankings with Google Places by discussing the basics of a Places listing, how to set one up properly, and some of the principles behind why this is important.

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