Google Places / Maps - Best Course to buy?

I wouldn't say buying a course over 30 days old makes it no longer relevant to the changes happening in places.

I would buy from those who have PROVEN track records as real OFFLINE firms that offer courses. Its so easy to just write a report on how to do this or that and the list goes on.

Some one told me about a person who's still a teenager selling a course on how to be a salesperson. What? Yups!

Most companies who are having great success doing Google Places aren't making big changes to the way they do things because in reality they are practicing good sound seo principles and as a result their listings haven't suffered at all throughout all the changes.

I hear what your saying.

Thanks for taking the time to respond - what draws me to this area is the way that google really is trying to help the small guy get a foothold in their locality, for even big keywords that would have been totally impossible before google started giving local such a lift.

I am currently running an e-commerce based business in the UK. I am mail order based, so can easily serve the whole of the UK. I am a little guy, only me and a part-timer working for me, but we have kept going since late 2003 in a very competitive market. But, what I'm finding now is that the big boy plc's or massive brand names are now stomping their mark all over page one for my keywords. Also, I'm finding that amazon / ebay / google products blocks are syphoning a lot of visitors towards them.

I'm guessing the reason why google have made this shift is one of trust. A big brand name isn't likely to take a customers money and not send the item and not answer the phone/emails etc. But I used to love the fact that I could compete in a countrywide market with the brand names and pick up some of the business, which has kept the mortgage being paid up to date till now.

But, I'm looking at the future and can only see things going more and more local even for us guys that do postal country wide services/products. So I'm wanting to be able to give a great service to small businesses that are too busy doing their business and don't have any idea of how to compete on google. I'm sure the extra phone calls and enquiries that it will bring them will be a great thing for them, especially in these very difficult economic times.

I know I've rambled on way to much here and I apologise for that!

Cheers again for your input, so their aren't any magic tricks with local places, a solid seo type foundation will give their sites a good boost in the places results.