gistfile1.php

$input = "some text";

$query = "select centroid.latitude, centroid.longitude from geo.places where text='$input'";

$url = "http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=" . urlencode($query) . "&format=json&callback=";

$ch = curl_init($url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

$results = json_decode($response, true);

$results = $results["query"]["results"];
if (count($results["place"]) == 1) {
    $lat = $results["place"]["centroid"]["latitude"];
    $long = $results["place"]["centroid"]["longitude"];
} else {
    $lat = $results["place"][0]["centroid"]["latitude"];
    $long = $results["place"][0]["centroid"]["longitude"];
}

if (!(lat & long)) {
   //put code in here for when there isn't a match.
}