Abstract: A route-biased search in a mobile navigation system locates points of interest (POI) on or convenient to a mobile user's current travel. The route-biased search operates in two modes, navigation and non-navigation. The navigation mode identifies the most convenient POIs that honor the mobile user's route to their destination. The non-navigation mode identifies the most convenient POIs that are located ahead of the user based on the user's inferred direction of travel. The route-biased search determines the best possible routes to the identified POIs taking into account the impact of the detour costs of traveling to the POI along with other ranking factors.