Over the past year and a half I have spoken with several mortgage professionals about using pay-per-click to drive traffic to their websites to produce exclusive Internet leads. The one common problem that is always a stumbling block of some sort is that search engines really aren't very good at providing localized results. For professionals such as mortgage brokers and lawyers, this is a big problem. Most wish to only market within their given city, state, and/or region. Many lack the required licenses to provide services in all but a few states. Due to the nature of search engine results, PPC is an inefficient marketing method for these professionals. That is about to change. Both Google and Overture are working on solutions to what is referred to as "geo-targeting." It will be some time before the search engines can roll effective geo-targeted results, but the mere possibility of these developments is exciting nonetheless. PPC search engines are very good when it comes to producing improved service features. When they get behind a project, they pour resources into it and move fast. Every month Google seems to roll out a new enhancement that greatly benefits advertisers. This month it was Conversion Tracking. Here's hoping the next big thing will be the Geo-Targeted Search.

Here are a couple of articles on localized searches for your perusal:
http://payperclickanalyst.com/article-duncan-parry-002.htm
http://www.pandia.com/sw-2003/40-google.html