Right now there are 3060 tags available. I've already cleaned out a bunch of the most frivolous ones once already. And there are a whole lot more back in there. If that continues, then the best bet might be to just shut down the tag system completely, or leave it up to the mods to put in proper tags for relevant threads. Which, quite honestly, would likely be a far larger burden than any of them would be willing to take on.
The way the tag system is set up right now, any registered member can put an already existing tag on their
own thread, but cannot create a new tag. Paying members can create new tags for their
own threads as well as utilize ones already existing. No one can put tags on anyone else's threads. This was done this way so that abuse of the tag system can be quickly determined as to who is doing the abusing and dealt with accordingly. Not that I have followed up on that, however.
So as it exists at the moment, paying members can put states within their own classified ads via tags, but non paying members will not be able to till a paying member creates that state tag for them.
Sorry, but at this point I feel that the tag system is already being used in a frivolous manner by some members, so opening it up further for any registered member to create their own tags would only exacerbate the situation.
Seriously, I would think potential buyers and sellers would be mostly interested in specific ITEMS to buy rather than wanting to find everyone local to them and then see what they have to offer. Seems to me that attending local shows would be their best bet if that is the way they insist on finding what they are interested in via a local venue. I don't see this site ever getting big enough where making separate sections locally on a state level will ever prove to be worthwhile concerning the resources it will use up. This industry is just too small for that kind of focus, in my opinion.
Sorry, but without a complete overhaul of this system and/or a time machine, there doesn't appear to be much that can be done about that search issue.