How to do a search based on the user’s location & search term and return proximity-based results?

It’s possible to query the database by lat long form a zip code.

Then you need a way to utilize the Haversine formula to calculate the distance and sort by the shortest value.

function getDistanceFromLatLonInKm(lat1,lon1,lat2,lon2) {
  var R = 6371; // Radius of the earth in km
  var dLat = deg2rad(lat2-lat1);  // deg2rad below
  var dLon = deg2rad(lon2-lon1); 
  var a = Math.sin(dLat/2) * Math.sin(dLat/2) +
    Math.cos(deg2rad(lat1)) * Math.cos(deg2rad(lat2)) * 
    Math.sin(dLon/2) * Math.sin(dLon/2); 
  var c = 2 * Math.atan2(Math.sqrt(a), Math.sqrt(1-a)); 
  var d = R * c; // Distance in km
  return d;
}

function deg2rad(deg) {
  return deg * (Math.PI/180)
}

Look at these answers to see a couple ways to do it.

• Post queries by latitude and longitude (SQL Solution)
• How can I implement a location based (zip code) search in WordPress?
• Calculate distance between two latitude-longitude points? (Haversine formula)