I think local business results in the web SERPs is a good thing. Certainly when someone is searching specifically FOR a business within a geographic location and when a business without a website might be more relevant than a business that does have one. It’s the sponsored element that makes me wary. Until it’s rolled out properly we can’t be sure what we are going to end up with or indeed if businesses that pay will get preferential treatment/increased visibility.

For now, and certainly while it’s free (I like free!) I just think it would be wise for any business (with a website or not) to take a bit more notice of Google Places and ensure their place page has as much info as possible, which really was the reason for the post. I suspect there are many website-less SME’s that aren’t even aware that they have a place page.

I think the first result in the organic listing is supposed to be the most relevant website, whereas the map result is aiming at being the most local. It’s result matches what happens if you do a map search, so it is using the same process (so I would call it a map result).

I personally think they are wrong to add this to the top of the page, and would be better to add it to the top result if they also have a map entry for that website.

I may be wrong here (or misreading you) – but isn’t the place page free, and it’s the sponsored link in the place page section which is being paid for? Google are usually pretty good at saying when something is sponsored, and the examples you gave (“Garden Decking Tameside”) does not have this link. As far as I can tell, a different website could actually place a link here, as is shown on the blog article you link to.

At the end of the day, Google is a business, and that seems a sensible practise, as opposed to letting people buy a “place page” link which appears to be natural but is not.

surely it is because if someone is looking for somewhere on a map, then they are likely to be looking for directions and so the further details map page is more usable/relevant to the map results than the website is.

These are WEB searches, not MAP searches (perhaps my original post was unclear on that point so I added an update )
If someone searches for a product or service they are looking for that product or service.
If someone is looking for directions they would be searching an addresss or searching from maps directly.

Google’s theory is possibly that the organic listing should provide the most relevant web site, so if the map is providing a less relevant site, then there should not be a link here to make it seem more relevant than the URLs in the organic listings.

The results that appeared for ‘place pages’ that I saw WERE relevant.
If Google is showing a map result of a site that is less relevant than the ‘organic’ results below, it shouldn’t appear in WEB search at all.

I think they are right to do this, as I do often see SEOd sites being linked to a fake address in order to do well in an area.

This doesn’t solve that problem. Those ‘fake’ listings are still getting a listing. You don’t need a fake address you just need ‘an address’ (e.g. PO Box number) and different mobile number to verify the listing. The new place page listing still allows a direct link but it requires that the listing owner PAYS for it. This will make the local results sponsored, not organic.

It would be like the video results pointing to the homepage of the website which embeds the video, rather than the YouTube URL where the video exists online.

Google’s theory is possibly that the organic listing should provide the most relevant web site, so if the map is providing a less relevant site, then there should not be a link here to make it seem more relevant than the URLs in the organic listings.

I think they are right to do this, as I do often see SEOd sites being linked to a fake address in order to do well in an area.