In one of many possible embodiments, a method of locating a mobile terminal within a location area of a mobile communication network is provided. In the method, a threshold is set by calculating a sum of all location probabilities in the location area and dividing the sum by a maximum number of polling cycles allowed before the mobile terminal is located. Cells in the location area are arranged in non-ascending order according to their location probabilities. Multiple paging areas are formed one at a time by starting with a first cell not used in a previous paging area, grouping cells in order, and stopping when the total of location probabilities reaches the threshold or when no more ungrouped cells exist within the location area.