Hey Bob,
bjomer13 pretty much nailed it but let me provide some more clarification.
We do need a "Geo Identifier" or specific location in order to provide local results. This is because we are unable to determine where a user will be submitting there search from. For example, I'm in Seattle and if I search for the keyword "pizza" and someone in New York performs that very same search we will both get very different Google Places results. This is because Google is capable of determining the general location that the person is searching from based on their IP address. If we were both perform a search for "Seattle Pizza" though we would get pretty much the same Google Places results for pizza places in the Seattle area. These results will be quite similar to the results I would get if I just searched for "pizza" because Google knows that I am in Seattle.
For rankings you will be provided with a number that the keyword ranks for if it is in the top 50 organic search results and you will have an icon if universal (Google Places) results appear in the SERP for that keyword. If your site is in the local results then you will have tick marks on top of the universal results icon indicating you are indeed in those results.
To learn more about rankings check out our help documentation here:
http://www.seomoz.org/help/rankings
Hope that helps!
Kenny