My website appears at the top of Google Places, but not at all in web search. Why?

[Matt]

I have had my business' website listed on Google for about 4-5 months now. When I search for the term [location]+[business type] (eg. Coventry Dance Studio), it comes top of Places listings, but doesn't appear at all on the normal web page search. Why could this be? And can I do anything about it?
I should have mentioned that we have previously appeared on the listings. With the mentioned search terms, we were at page 3 for a while, then climbed to page one briefly before disappearing completely. So it surely can't be our SEO. Hope this helps.

[Soren]

Without knowing your web address I cannot really answer the question. But I will guess and say your SEO is not very good.

[dan]

Hi Matt,

It absolutely is your SEO. Without going into too much info, Google is changing how it gets localized search results (for more info, check out Google's Venus update). The fact of the matter is that ranking for something in the past doesn't in any way guarantee ranking for something in future.

Your best bet is going to be to get somebody in to look at your SEO and come. You might be best off to create specific pages on your website to target specific areas and use standard on-page SEO techniques then look at a few local directories.