A search strategy based on the maximal information gain principle is presented for the cued search of phased array radars. First, the method for the determination of the cued search region, arrangement of beam positions, and the calculation of the prior probability distribution of each beam position is discussed. And then,two search algorithms based on information gain are proposed using Shannon entropy and Kullback-Leibler entropy,respectively. With the proposed strategy, the information gain of each beam position is predicted before the radar detection, and the observation is made in the beam position with the maximal information gain. Compared with the conventional method of sequential search and confirm search, simulation results show that the proposed search strategy can distinctly improve the search performance and save radar time resources with the same given detection probability.