In an earlier thread ( http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?860927-How-can-i-compete-with-a-competitor-whose-ranking-better-only-coz-of-older-site ) i asked how could i compete with some really old (and mostly dead) websites build on keywords upon which i need to rank well. Got a lot of helpful replies and i did my job according to that. But that didnt really help me as much as google places did. Within days of listing on google places, my site began to list on number 4 or 5 in most of my targeted keywords. Though m not getting a good feeling about this but still i think i can consider my job done… at least for google. Now what about bing and other search engines ?? I really have no idea how to rank well on them. I followed every legitimate technique i can think of but still my site shows on page 3. This is like i didnt do anything and google places did my job.
Google is the biggest search engine and you should be happy that you have ranked your website on Google. Moreover, yahoo and bing rankings keep changing more often than Google. I always focus on Google because once you rank your website on Google it will stay there but on other search engines the rankings are very unstable.
However, I would suggest you to continue link building. Links will help you in maintaining your rank.
I’d be interested to know if using google places increased search position for visitors in just the local area or worldwide (i.e. does the increase only occur to clients within a certain radius of the location listed in google places)?
Only for the local searches of course. If you search on google.com - “my keywords in new delhi”, it will display my site on the 4th position. Remove the “in new delhi”, and it will extinct from the search results.