Now that Google has almost a year under its belt with their local rating and reviews feature, they have removed third-party reviews from Google Places altogether. This was probably their plan all along. In order to popularize the service, the site needed to be helpful right away. So, it utilized reviews from Yelp.com and other sites – to much chagrin from these competitors.
But now, they apparently feel comfortable living off their own user’s reviews. They have also added a “write a review” button at the top of each Place page, in order to elicit user reviews. Those local business reviews will obviously be most relevant to the user’s friends, and as Google Plus keeps growing, these network suggestions are going to become even more prevalent.