Not number 1? Don’t despair. There are things you can do.

Where you are in Google Places matters, as we would expect, but if you’re not on the top, there are things you can do to get your fair share of the clicks, thanks to this great study from “Mediative” that is revealed in their white paper called “Eye Tracking and Click Mapping Google Places.”

Their study involved 12 participants who came to Mediative’s eye-tracking research lab in Toronto, Canada and 90 online from whom Mediative tracked actual clicks.

The question they were asked was: “If you are in [city] looking for a tatoo artist. Where would you click next?” They repeated the test for 3 cities to compare different actions that might occur as a result of the different query results that would appear.

There’s something new on the block in Google Places

It’s not real obvious and if Google wants to make a splash with it, they need to hire a better usability designer, but it is there just the same and could possibly make an impact on your bottom line if you are a local business hoping to capitalize on your 1st place position in the 7 pack.

(In case “7 pack” leaves you scratching your head in wonderment, that refers to those listings with the red pin for local search queries.)