How can I implement a location based (zip code) search in WordPress?

I would modify the answer from gabrielk and the linked blog post by using database indexes and minimizing the number of actual distance calculations.

If you know the coordinates of the user and you know the maximum distance (say 10km), you can draw a bounding box that is 20km by 20km with the current location in the middle. Get these bounding coordinates and query only stores between these latitudes and longitudes. Do not yet use trigonometry functions in your database query, as this will prevent indexes from being used. (So you might get a store that is 12km away from you if it is in the north-east corner of the bounding box, but we throw it out in the next step.)

Only calculate the distance (as the bird flies or with actual driving directions, as you prefer) for the few stores that are returned. This will drastically improve processing time if you have a large number of stores.

For the related lookup (“give the ten nearest stores”) you can do a similar lookup, but with an initial distance guess (so you start with a 10km by 10km area, and if you don’t have enough stores you expand it to 20km by 20km and so on). For this initial distance guess you once calculate the number of stores over the total area and use that. Or log the number of queries needed and adapt over time.

I added a full code example at Mike’s related question, and here is an extension that gives you closest X locations (quick and barely tested):

class Monkeyman_Geo_ClosestX extends Monkeyman_Geo
{
    public static $closestXStartDistanceKm = 10;
    public static $closestXMaxDistanceKm = 1000; // Don't search beyond this

    public function addAdminPages()
    {
        parent::addAdminPages();
        add_management_page( 'Location closest test', 'Location closest test', 'edit_posts', __FILE__ . 'closesttest', array(&$this, 'doClosestTestPage'));
    }

    public function doClosestTestPage()
    {
        if (!array_key_exists('search', $_REQUEST)) {
            $default_lat = ini_get('date.default_latitude');
            $default_lon = ini_get('date.default_longitude');

            echo <<<EOF
<form action="" method="post">
    <p>Number of posts: <input size="5" name="post_count" value="10"/></p>
    <p>Center latitude: <input size="10" name="center_lat" value="{$default_lat}"/>
        <br/>Center longitude: <input size="10" name="center_lon" value="{$default_lon}"/></p>
    <p><input type="submit" name="search" value="Search!"/></p>
</form>
EOF;
            return;
        }
        $post_count = intval($_REQUEST['post_count']);
        $center_lon = floatval($_REQUEST['center_lon']);
        $center_lat = floatval($_REQUEST['center_lat']);

        var_dump(self::getClosestXPosts($center_lon, $center_lat, $post_count));
    }

    /**
     * Get the closest X posts to a given location
     *
     * This might return more than X results, and never more than
     * self::$closestXMaxDistanceKm away (to prevent endless searching)
     * The results are sorted by distance
     *
     * The algorithm starts with all locations no further than
     * self::$closestXStartDistanceKm, and then grows this area
     * (by doubling the distance) until enough matches are found.
     *
     * The number of expensive calculations should be minimized.
     */
    public static function getClosestXPosts($center_lon, $center_lat, $post_count)
    {
        $search_distance = self::$closestXStartDistanceKm;
        $close_posts = array();
        while (count($close_posts) < $post_count && $search_distance < self::$closestXMaxDistanceKm) {
            list($north_lat, $east_lon, $south_lat, $west_lon) = self::getBoundingBox($center_lat, $center_lon, $search_distance);

            $geo_posts = self::getPostsInBoundingBox($north_lat, $east_lon, $south_lat, $west_lon);


            foreach ($geo_posts as $geo_post) {
                if (array_key_exists($geo_post->post_id, $close_posts)) {
                    continue;
                }
                $post_lat = floatval($geo_post->lat);
                $post_lon = floatval($geo_post->lon);
                $post_distance = self::calculateDistanceKm($center_lat, $center_lon, $post_lat, $post_lon);
                if ($post_distance < $search_distance) {
                    // Only include those that are in the the circle radius, not bounding box, otherwise we might miss some closer in the next step
                    $close_posts[$geo_post->post_id] = $post_distance;
                }
            }

            $search_distance *= 2;
        }

        asort($close_posts);

        return $close_posts;
    }

}

$monkeyman_Geo_ClosestX_instace = new Monkeyman_Geo_ClosestX();