Fancy a drink in Canary Wharf?: A user study on location-based mobile search Alia Amin † 1 , Sian Townsend ± , Jacco van Ossenbruggen † 2 , Lynda Hardman †3 † Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ± Google UK Ltd., London, United Kingdom Abstract. We present a web-based diary study on location-based search behavior using a mobile search engine. To capture users' location-based search behavior in a ubiquitous setting, we use a web-based diary tool that collects users' detailed mobile search activity, their location and diary entries. This method enables us to capture users' explicit behavior (query made), their implicit intention (motivation behind search) and the context (spatial, temporal, and social) in which the search was carried out. The results of the study show that people tend to stick closely to regularly used routes and regularly visited places, e.g. home and work. We also found that most location-based searches are conducted while in the presence of others. We summarize our findings and offer suggestions to improve location-based search by using features such as location-based service mash-ups. Keywords: location-based search, local search, mobile search, diary study 1. Introduction While the World Wide Web allows access to information globally, local geographical aspects are nonetheless important in many web search tasks. In a generic search, such as searching for a movie trailer or a book, geographical aspects are irrelevant. This is not the case for location-based searches. For example, when a user is searching for the nearest pubs, the system is required to identify local pubs and only present those that are in the neighborhood. Unlike generic search, the geographical context is important for location-based search. Much research has shown consistent demand for location- based information on the desktop as well as on mobile devices [9,21,22]. Estimates on how often such search occurs have been disclosed by several major search engines: in [21], samples of queries from 2001 Excite desktop searches were examined and 19.7% of them were searching for places, people and things; around 9-10% of the queries collected in [22] on Yahoo! mobile search were identified to have geographical search intentions, whereas more than 15% of 1 million Google queries 1 This work was conducted while working as an intern at Google UK Ltd., London. 2 VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 3 University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands