How to find people online
Have you ever wanted to find an old friend, or someone else, on the Web, but had a hard time doing it? Here are some tips and tricks to help you find people online.
There are a few ways that are free and give you the thrill of the hunt, and there are other ways that will cost you money and probably also get you faster and more complete results, if you can avoid the myriad scams that exist in this sector of the Web economy. We’ll take a look at the free ways to find people first, since that is both less expensive and more fun, starting with the best-known tools, then take a short look at the ways that cost money.
Google – Google.com is the searchers best friend right now, bar none, with billions of Web pages indexed all over the world. The most common people searching method, and the most direct, is to search for the person’s name, of course. That is easier if the name is less common. It is easier to find William Dennison than it is to find John Smith.
Certainly, when you search, put the name you are looking for in quotes, like “William Dennison,” so Google does not bring back everyone with either the name William or the name Dennison, but only people named exactly “William Dennison.” You may also have to try a few combinations, like “William C. Dennison” and “Bill Dennison” one of those may be how old Willie is referred to now. It may take a while. The name is just the start, and there may be too many hits to choose from at first.
It may also be helpful to add a place name, like the name of a state or a city. If you know good old Bill is in Philadelphia or Montana, that will cut down on the number of search return hits you get, which gives you fewer to sort through, and saves you time. Even after you think you have found the right party and know where they live, you can use this technique to filter out all of the William Dennisons that live elsewhere. The same logic applies to professions. If you know that Bill is an engineer, add engineer to the search. Neither Philadelphia or engineer, by the way, should be inside quotes.
The final search might be [ “Bill Dennison” Montana engineer. ]
Specific People Search Sites – There are sites that are free, yet claim to be willing to find the people you want. Be aware that there is very little available for free on these sites. One example is ZabaSearch.com. They may well be able to locate the party you are looking for. But after that initial location of the person, the only real way to get details is to pay for them, which we will discuss later.
There are also sites that specialize in specific types of information. For example, Yahoo offers a people search, a telephone number search, a reverse telephone search, obituary searches, business searches, email searches, etc. They are also available on any number of other sites. To find and have a go at these services, go back to google and type [ find email address ] and follow some of the hits to those specialized services. Change the search terms appropriately in Google to find other types of services. Again, it is quite possible that you will dead-end without getting a lot of information. Be careful not to give out any personal information on yourself, even if you are asked for it.
Paid Services – If you have tried Google with no success, and you have been stymied by getting only tantalizingly close to what you want to know, you might have to break down and pay for the information, assuming that you want it badly enough. There are a million (at least) places that will take your money in trade for information. Don’t pay for information unless you are very sure that you have found the right person using the free tools. If you pay $40 (about the going rate) for information on Bill Dennison, the engineer in Montana, you might find only that you have acted too fast and your major discovery will be that you have a lot of useless information about the wrong Bill Denison, and have to start over.
Very often, these paid services will give you enough information for free so that you can figure out which of the thirty Bill Dennisons is the one you want. That is possible on the ZabaSearch.com site, and also on sites like PeopleFinders.com. Sometimes these sites will list the ages of the people that it finds, which can make it easier to narrow it down. Some sites also list other names that are associated with the people found by your criteria, which is another good filter.
As you can tell, this all can be a bit of a quagmire. You need to consider that you are living in a society with two traits: it is an information society and it is a society in which business is king. If you are not willing to put in the time and effort required to do it for free, or if you do not have the expertise in searching for people and things, maybe you would actually be better off paying for the information. Again, make sure you have found the right person before you give a Web detective site your credit card number. As far as I am aware, they do not issue refunds. Enjoy your search!
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April 22nd, 2009
Great blog – I’ve personally found http://www.yasni.com a huge help with finding friends and former colleagues – it’s kind of like Google but for people, as it searches all social networks and blogs too for any mention.
January 16th, 2011
Hello, just stopped by doing some research for my Montana 4g site. Truly more information that you can imagine on the web. Wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but great site. Cya later.