Local search is quickly becoming one of the hottest topics in online marketing and search in general. It's becoming much easier to search online for a local pizza shop than it is to check the yellow pages!

If you're looking to build a localized directory, one of the most important features is the ability for users to be able to enter their postal code and find results within a certain distance or radius. In the past I posted the SQL code to do a lookup and return the longitude/latitude (geocode), but here's a PHP class that is a pre-packaged way of doing this, so you can easily add the functionality to your web app!