People Search Tips To Help You Find People Online

Free People Search Tips Free tips and online people searches for finding past friends and family that you have lost touch with. Created by: Skipease.com People Search Copyright 2009 Skipease.com ( See last slide for reuse of this material )

1. Write It Down Before you begin your actual search for someone, you should write down as much personal information on the person as you can remember. Some information that you may want to record will include ...

Information To Write Down

First, middle and last names
Maiden name and married name(s) for females
Nicknames
Previous phone numbers
Previous street address(es)
Email addresses and online usernames
High schools and universities attended

Names and last known locations of people related to the person
Names and last known locations of mutual friends that you share with the person.
Professional and career information, including companies worked for
Current or approximate age
Any other personal information that you can think of

2. Whitepages People Search

One of the first online searches you use should be the Whitepages (see links at the side). Whitepages allow you to do variouse searches like: “city and state”, “state only” or “all states”. Whitepages also has reverse phone number and reverse address searches that you will want to run on previous knows addresses and phones.

People Search
* Search for the person in previous known locations, for people with uncommon last names exclude the city and try a statewide or nationwide search.
Reverse Searches
* Try reverse searches on previous known addresses and phone numbers for the person.

3. Other Free People Searches

The web is full of great free people searches. Before we go on, try searching for someone on some of the web's top free people searches on the right of this screen.

Pipl.com
Zabasearch.com
Wink.com
Zoominfo.com
Yoname.com

4. Search Social Networks

The recent explosion in online social networking has made it easier than ever to find past friends and classmates. At the right are links to some of the web's top social networks. You will want to try searching these social networks for friends and family.

Facebook.com
Myspace.com
Twitter.com
Linkedin.com
Jigsaw.com
Friendster.com
Youtube.com
Flickr.com
Hi5.com

5. Mutual Friends & Colleagues

A great offline resource that you may want to try is contacting any mutual friends & colleagues that you share with the person you are looking for. I call this the “six degrees of separation” search, after the notion that everyone on earth is separated from one another by no more than six personal contacts.

Mutual family members
Coworkers & Colleagues
Past high school or college classmates
Past mutual military buddies
Neighbors
Any other people you can think of that you may be able to locate and contact

6. Last Name Searches

Last name only searches can help you locate a person or possible family members. This is especially helpful if the person has an uncommon last name or has lived in small towns or rural areas in the past. To perform a last name only search, just leave out the first name in any online people search.

Whitepages.com
Zabasearch.com
Pipl.com
* Do last name only searches in all city, state areas that the person has lived in. Don't forget to write down any possible family leads you find. For really uncommon last names, search statewide and “all states” nationwide.

7. Neighbor Searches

Neighbors, both past and present, can be a big help in locating a person. To find find possible neighbors, do a reverse address search on Whitepages.com and include a bracketed range of addresses that include your target address. Note : do not include any space characters within the bracketed range. For example: [100-125] is a correct search, but [100 – 125] is not a correct search.

Whitepages.com Address
Example: Say you are looking for neighbors of someone who lives or has lived at 112 Main St.; a bracket range search using [100-125] Main St. along with the city and state will find potential neighbors.
If no results are returned, try increasing the bracketed range, like [80-150] Main St.

8. Email & Username Searches

If you have previous email addresses for the person you are looking for or logon and usernames that they have used for online communities, you can try searching these on the major search engines like Google. In addition, Pipl.com has a reverse email and username search that may be worthwhile for you to try.

Google.com
Pipl.com Email Search
Pipl.com Username Search
* Try searching for your or someone else's email address on Google to see what you find, or try searching any of your username or screen names on Google or Pipl to see what is out there.
You may be surprised at what you find.

9. Blog Searches

More and more people now publish and post comments on blogs. Blog searches can be a great way to find a person by their real name or by their screen and usernames.

Technorati.com
Icerocket.com
Google Blog Search

10. Google Searches

Google has also proven to be a very valuable people search tool. Knowing how to “Google” people can help you find past friends and family. As we will soon see Google can also be used to find free online public records sources on the fly. Review the example Google People searches on the right.

John Doe
“ John Doe”
John L. Doe attorney LA, CA
“ John Doe” Los Angeles, CA
[email_address]
John Doe site:cnn.com
John Leigh Doe site:navy.mil
“ John Doe” site:linkedin.com

11. Site Specific Google Searches

In tip 10. we say examples that used Google's site: operator which allows you to search specific sites or domains. The site: operator allows you to search a specific website or top level domain for information. Some examples of site and domain-specific Google searches are at the right. Note : don't forget the colon after site and do NOT use spaces between the site: operator and the domain name.

“ Bill Gates” site:microsoft.com
Obama site:whitehouse.gov
John Doe site:mil
John Doe site:navy.mil
“ John Doe” site:edu
John L. Doe site:osu.edu
“ John Doe” site:osu.edu
Donald Trump site:linkedin.com
Schwarzenegger site:ca.gov

12. Advanced Google Search

If you are unsure of all the different options the Google search engine gives you for searching online or don't feel like remembering them, you can always use Google's advanced search page ( link on the right ). Note : the more information you provide on the person you are looking for ( see Tip #1 ), the better Google will be at finding information on that person.

Google Advanced Search

13. Public Records Searches

Government public records can also be a great way to find a person or find information on a person. The closer a person lives to a major metro area, the more likely you will find valuable public records searches that can yield information on that person. Some of the more common public records available online are listed on the right.