Overnight, Google started rolling out a new layout for Places, the map listings that appear at the top of the search results for queries that include a city/town name.

The new layout looks like this:

Visually, the page is quite different. The map has been taken from its central position to the right hand column and now floats as a user scrolls up and down the page. The seven results that used to accompany the map have now been separated and are mixed in with the 'natural' search results.

This proves Google's commitment to local search. The new results show a lot less directories and aggregator sites and a lot more websites that belong to the cities being searched. SEO for a city that your business does not belong in just got a lot tougher and businesses that were relying on Places for traffic that did not own a website (i.e. a lot of trades people) appear to be out in the cold as the left hand side results are pulling data from a websites title and meta description.