Can someone please explan to me how google places works? What makes some listings place higher than others? does having reviews help?...etc
I find it difficult to believe that if you know enough to ask the question you do not understand how it works. Very short answers to your above mentioned questions, listings place higher when you increase their relavancy factor through citation/syndication/relevant content, etc, yes reviews help but not all are weighted equally. Relative placement will fluctuate dramatically during the indexing process but after a few weeks slows down and gives you a pretty stable SERP.
My places page is optimized to the fullest and I still get only 3 or 4 hits per month..I think its a good question
It is quite a strange one that. I think age of the listing has quite a lot to do with it a bit like domain age. but not sure why.
I have a domain that gets amazing organic results. always 1st place on my preferred keywords, however in Google places i show up on the 3rd page. so im guessing Google places & Google regular results are not linked together at all?
Alright, specifics are much easier to clarify. First page ranking in Google Places does not have to do with the age of a domain. It doesn't need one in the first place, so that is irrelevant. Techguy - Are you on the front page? If not that is probably why you only get a few hits, or your listing is bran-spanking new, or finally, it is in a niche that nobody is looking for (unlikely). If you clarify I might be able to help you. Visualkreations - Google places and organic listings do link together but differently than you probably assume. While organic is keyword specific, local is much more industry specific; meaning you have 5 categories, those then are associated with 50+ keywords, some of which you are probably targeting organically. Your placement in GP must be due to a few other factors that I cannot address without looking at it.
Google counts many things to give high position to any listing over Google places. Those measures are selection of right category, keywords, no. of reviews, and age of listing.