Google Local dropped ranking

[jconnel]

Hello,

I hope this has not already been covered since I tried to read as many forum entries as possible over the past few weeks. I have a website and started doing SEO for it myself. I started out about 5 months ago. Now my listing for service + city is positioning well. Currently position 4. I am also ranking well for other specific keywords. I was recently working on the Google Local raking and was trying to improve it. I first got into the 10 pack. Then into the seven pack and thereafter position number 5.
But no matter what I tried I could not improve my ranking from number 5. I put in allot of work trying to improve my listing and increase my citations but for some reason new citations never showed up. All at once 14 new citations appear. Of course I was excited and expected my ranking to improve to position 1 or at least 2.
After two days my Google Local ranking dropped to 34.
Any ideas???