What does Google Places mean to me?

You probably already know, or have witnessed first-hand that Google have changed the way that searching for local business and accommodations. Local listings now integrate below the sponsored listings, but above the organic search results.

Google claimed some time ago that 1 in 5 searches across Google's search engine empire were location specific.  Due to this reason they have integrated more local listings within your search results. So this is seen as an attempt to provide results to that 20% of searchers.

There has been much chatter across webmaster and SEO forums such as CapturedTech.com  specifically about this subject. The reasoning behind this trend is due mainly to the fact this is a huge change for us as users, many of us as webmasters and our businesses as a whole are affected in one way or another.