@Benichou2011; @kagan2015search]. Numerous examples appear in the natural sciences including in ecology [@Viswanathan2011; @Viswanathan1999; @MendezChap9; @bartumeus2005animal; @edwards2007revisiting], biochemistry [@gorman2008; @Kantslere02403; @bonnet2008sliding] and chemistry [@Haangi1990]. In addition, many human activities involve situations where a target has to be found. Some instances are the location of a lost object, rescue operations, or fugitive prosecutions [@frost2001review]. More recently, the development of eye-tracking technology has allowed the study of visual searches on screens [@najemnik2005optimal; @credidio2012statistical; @amor2016persistence]. In order to understand the social, biological and physical mechanisms behind these processes, it is essential to have empirical evidence of the performance of different strategies and how they are affected by environmental cues, regardless of whether they are employed by humans, animals or bacteria [@levin1992problem]. Such data are also required to verify the mathematical models that have been proposed [@bartumeus2002optimizing; @hein; @Benichou2005; @Chupeau2015; @Vergassola2007; @campos2015optimal; @abe2015levy; @Robertse12572], and to develop improved protocols.

Situations in which a target has to be located appear in a large variety of scenarios, which allows the design of multiple strategies to find a successful solution. Such strategies can be classified in many different ways, according to one or more of their properties [@MendezChap6]. For instance, stochastic or systematic processes are distinguished depending 