It's sort of the equivalent of trying to find your headphones by walking around with the bluetooth menu open on your phone and waiting to see if they pop up the

It's sort of the equivalent of trying to find your headphones by walking around with the bluetooth menu open on your phone and waiting to see if they pop up then they must be nearby, except all you know is that they're somewhere on Earth and you don't know where until you come within ten feet or so of them. And in reality it's even harder than that, since the surface of Earth is essentially two-dimensional as far as finding things goes, but a search for a planet would need to cover most of the volume of the greater solar system.