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Greetings Ian, Thanks for coming to Q&A with your question. I want to be certain that I understand your client's situation. You mention the queries First Aid Training in Cornwall First Aid Courses in Cornwall Health and Safety Training in Cornwall These are not, per se, local queries. Google Places (and most of local search) is a city based application. If the client is in Victoria, Cornwall, then 'Victoria' is actually his true local term. I am in the U.S., so things may be slightly different here, but at any rate, I would expect the client to rank well in Places for Victoria-related queries and that efforts to go after the county of Cornwall would need to be chiefly organic in nature. Is this correct or am I misunderstanding what you are describing? In general, in North America, the website is an extremely important part of any local campaign. One applies all traditional SEO techniques + the strong usage of geographic data. So, good onpage SEO, lots of local-focused content and linkbuilding are all going to be party of your work with local-focused clients to achieve high Places rankings for their city of location. At the same time, they need to have a clean, complete Places record (no violations!) and work to accrue citations and reviews within Google. Simultaneously, they need good records in the major 3rd party local business indexes in your country. All of this comes together to create a winning Internet presence. In closing, there was a shakeup here in N. America some weeks ago. My friend and colleague, Linda Buquet, has dubbed this change the 'proximity algo lockout'. I don't know if this happened overseas as well, but I recommend you read about Google's apparent new narrower circle from city center in their results: http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-algorithm-ranking-drop.html Did this happen in the U.K. as well, and could it have affected your client's rankings? Just a thought.