User behavior in location search on mobile devices

Location search engines are an important part of GPS-enabled devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers. In this paper, we study how users behave when they interact with a location search engine by analyzing logs from a popular GPS-navigation service to find out whether mobile users’ location search characteristics differ from those of regular web search. In particular, we analyze query- and session-based characteristics and the temporal distribution of location searches performed on smart phones and tablet computers. Our findings may be used to improve the design of search interfaces in order to help users perform location search more effectively and improve the overall experience on GPS-enabled mobile devices.