Has anybody figured out the tracking system in Pokemon Go?

I honestly have no idea with that. They really should have included a tutorial to explain how to play rather than just throwing players straight into the game. All I know is that the patches of flying leaves show where Pokemon supposedly are. They never seem to trigger a Pokemon encounter for me, though. I've found most of mine while in the car with my husband driving. Oh, and when you open the list of nearby Pokemon, the footprints beneath each one are apparently 50m each, so a Pokemon that has 3 footprints under it is within a 150m radius from you. I think I saw a mention on Bulbapedia that they have a new wiki dedicated to Pokemon GO, but I haven't checked it out yet. Might have to do that to figure out what's up with the game... It just takes up a bit too much data for me to keep playing regularly, so I'll have to stick to WiFi until I get a new plan with unlimited data.

Just point your camera to the pokemon styles in nature. grass in a park, ghosts at night and so on.