Silkstream,

Are you sure that those pages actually have real penalties or is it algo changes?

Also, when you search your keyword phrases... what sorts of results show up in the SERPs? Does the local 7-pack show up?  If so, then your Google+ Local listing would most likely be what would get you to rank for those 'local' terms.

Do you have physical offices in each of the towns represented by the 'category+town' pages ... along with corresponding G+ Local pages for each?  If not, you may have difficulty ranking for many towns not close to the epicenter of your actual business address.

Any update on this?

Also, you could always "nofollow" the outgoing links if you were afraid of giving credit to them.

It looks like Google is showing the "Street View" map image instead of the image you uploaded.

So, this is your listing? https://maps.google.com/maps?cid=1552403007127876102

When you go here: http://www.google.com/local/add/ and log in with that account, do you see the listing? If so, that's where you'd edit the image.

I believe this is the Google Map Maker POI (Point of Interest) for that listing. Does that look right? http://www.google.com/mapmaker?gw=39&fid=0x89e37717ebe05e89:0xbc2be1f7aabc9ee5

And this is the Google + Page, right? https://plus.google.com/117400845160255741148/

Scott O.

What is the CID of your listing?

For example: http://www.orionweb.net/2012/03/20/gain-reviews-to-increase-your-google-places-listing-rank/ read the bottom of this post.

Also, what is the Name of the company? It's possible that you have more than one listing or perhaps Google is pulling in a photo from another authoritative website.

Scott

I think a press page would be a good addition. It wouldn't harm your rankings to link out to quality news sites. You could summarize each mention/link with your own paragraph of text to give the links context.

Scott O.